


Methodology

by minkmix



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abuse, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, Pain, did i mention abuse?, maybe i should say Peril
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-06-27 09:05:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 34,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15682284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minkmix/pseuds/minkmix
Summary: [postS2 finale] Sam is kidnapped after word gets out amongst hunters of just who he might really be. The wards drawn around Sam's chair aren't supposed to work on human beings but the pain he feels is very real... and yeah Gordon. <3 (and yes, I can adore the artery seasons)





	1. Methodology

Sam noticed her as soon as she walked in.

It helped that she wasn't too hard on the eyes. Given what he'd had to gaze at over the past three weeks in this dive, anything under fifty with boobs would have been welcome. Showing up sporadically for almost as many nights as he had, she leisurely crawled onto a bar stool by the bathrooms to drink by herself. All by herself. From the first time he had caught onto her uneven late night pattern, Sam had noticed that fact right away. Even before he had figured out she was pretty and someone around his own age, he had wondered what the deal was.

The types of places they walked in the early morning hours usually had a certain type of person regardless of the gender. The kind of woman looking for a high at 3AM by some rail road tracks weren’t much like the women that tended to make a man like him look twice for a good reason. Not that some of them weren’t fun to look at no matter where or who they were. But there was always desperation there, some sadness or anger that made you keep your distance.

He watched her wait for the bartender to notice her. Tipping back his own beer he listened to her order a glass of Pinot Grigio. Sam smiled on his swallow when all she got was the guy’s confused stare. When she was told that they had a few bottles of wine but no one knew exactly what it might be called, she tiredly amended her request to ‘anything white’. The only thing to get in a place like this was what came safely packed in sealed bottles. If you were feeling real adventurous you got whatever watery crap was foaming from the old tap. The dismal dark green nameless table wine the man produced looked like it was going to be as fine as vinegar. She took the drink in the beer stein with a small sigh, and pushed her bag up beside her on the bar top.

Curious, Sam watched sideways as she pulled out a note book. At least that was what he thought it was. When he heard the small click and beep of it, he realized it was one of those thin ThinkPads. Glancing around the sparse crowd of the room that was more or less confined around a distant pool table, Sam was privately glad that his brother was two counties away doing the other half of their current job. This girl would have been in Dean’s sights in no time at all and on the rare occasion Sam happened to share an interest, it always left him wishing he knew what to do and say just as quickly.

She caught him looking, which made him hesitantly smile, not at all as embarrassed as he thought he should be.

“Hey.” Sam tried.

He always thought guys that tried to make some weird kind of primitive contact by nodding or smiling was so lame. But it didn’t feel lame when she smiled back. It felt as good as the third Guinness that was running warm and nice through his blood.

It felt even better when she slipped off her seat and came over to his.

“I recommend the Riesling.” She said confidentially. “Bad year for the Pinot.”

With a grin, Sam decided he’d get her a beer and see what would happen next.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two hours later Sam found himself not wanting to use the bathroom because he knew when he came back out that this girl would probably be gone.

He just wasn’t this lucky.

But she wasn’t gone. Sitting with her tanned long legs crossed, and her nicely shaped nails clicking on two fresh beers, she grinned at his return. As he kind of expected, her story was a slightly weird one. It would have to be for someone like her to be slumming around in a dump like this.

It turned out she was an undergrad staying in town while her ailing grand mother moved one state over to be closer to the children. Stuck in the middle of nowhere while her Chicago life went chugging on without her. She had just gotten a new job too that was graciously allowing her to go mobile while the family crisis was gradually resolved. Beer bottles turned into full on pitchers and he noticed he was doing more than his part to put it all down.

Dean occasionally joked about checking him in to the Betty Ford Clinic for binge drinking. Like almost everything in Sam’s life his activities tended to be all or nothing. Feast or famine. When he was drinking with a goal in mind, he let himself cross the usual unbendable lines he had set up all around him. He didn’t do it often but the results were pretty much tragically patterned every time. The only difference was that tonight there wasn’t a college buddy or his brother around to make sure he didn’t find a nice cozy spot on a park bench for the night.

Feeling bold, he reached out and tucked the clothing tag that was sticking out at the back of her neck. The plastic label was stiff and sharp. The feel of it was like the kind you only had on a brand new shirt or you’d just cut it off as soon as you could. Her hand flew up to it in alarm, her face smoothing in vague relief when she realized what he had found and amended. Sam stopped to think about that reaction for a few moments before he let it go by. Before he had completely drifted to something else he did notice that all her clothes seemed to be completely new. Color fast and strangely stiff with factory creases still in place.

But the beauty and danger of booze was that the more you had, the less you worried about what you should be concerned with the most. Even as he watched the plastic pitcher be replaced and filled he knew that this was all a terrible idea. Nonetheless, he honestly couldn't be made to give a shit for a change.

By the time they got to the parking lot he wasn’t exactly fighting the kiss they had both seemed to be waiting for until the night time air. She made a small sound when he realized he’d backed her up against a wall, his mouth working on hers without much thought on her response. Stepping back, he shook his head to himself. He had drank too much. Something deep down that never shut off told him to step away and walk to the motel around the corner. He’d regret doing something quick and casual in the morning. He’d drive out of here and play it over and over in his head until he made himself sick with the what ifs and why nots.

Besides there was something still there in her eyes that he didn’t quite understand. Something guarded and wary. It kept the thin strand of his self restraint intact even out here all alone with the parked dark shapes of the cars.

She was breathing hard but Sam dully knew it wasn’t from some unbridled passion she was keeping in check. He tilted his head at her as he began to slowly comprehend that what he was looking at was something he knew very well. This was fear.

He backed up a step, the pleasant roil of alcohol doing the next thing it did best-- flaring the situation above and beyond what it could have been if he had been sober and rational. The warm comfortable feeling he'd had was gone, replaced by some troubling sensation that this woman believed he was going to hurt her. Mishandle her. Stepping back again, he pushed his hands through his hair. Had he misjudged her intentions? Maybe he had kissed her too soon and roughly in his rush. Maybe she just wanted to have a drink and not—

“Want to come to my car?”

The question made him choke on the slurred, sincere apology about to escape. His confusion washed over him again at the tone in her voice. It wavered and had a nervous edge that made no sense. All night they had been talking and laughing easily. Hadn’t they? Sam wasn’t so sure anymore. Straightening his jacket and swearing for the hundredth time that he was never drinking more than his body weight ever again, he decided he could show her he wasn’t some asshole that wanted to get wasted and score in some dive. He’d just walk her to her car and that would be it. He’d say good night and leave. Hazily, he wondered if she was even okay to drive. When he saw the car she was headed for he reached into his pocket for his cell phone. It was pretty hard to convince anyone to leave their ride behind for just about anything, but if she had been going at it anywhere near like he had she could use a cab—

Everything went sideways.

It took a moment to realize he was lying on the uneven gravel of the parking lot. A deep pothole was right under his head forcing a sharp angle view of the dimly lit bar behind them. His senses lethargically catching up with what the hell might have happened, his hand went to a delayed echo of pain on the back of his head. He heard a car door open. Far away, almost twenty feet. Too far for this to have been accomplished by her hands. Groggily looking up he saw her get into her four door sedan. Sam distantly remembered she'd mentioned having a hell of a time driving her old Toyota all the way from the big city. What she just got inside of was a fairly new rental.

Sam groaned when hands slipped into the collar of his coat, hauling him forward and then heaving him sternly to his shaky feet. Out there in the dark all he could tell was that who ever had leveled him had been male. Sloshed or not, his body reacted to the attack. With a satisfying feel of full impact the hands on him came free, and there was the hiss of a solid body across the loose rocks of the ground. Sam got ready to bring down some more of the same now that his opponent was forced on the defense.

But he was less than half his own speed. He was slow, his response times so off that he could hardly believe it was his own body. The man who had started this wasn’t experiencing any of these problems. Getting in a few of his strikes, Sam felt them brutally returned in blunt force. The last caught him under the jaw and he spun around bracing for the hard contact with the ground once again, this time face first. But instead he landed unexpectedly on the sedan’s trunk, his collision making a loud hollow metallic thud and a brief creak of the suspension as the car dipped on its tires.

Any thoughts that this was some small timer looking for a cashed pay check vanished when Sam felt the cool metal snap around one wrist wrenched up in the middle of his back. Knowing he was going to be really fucked if his other hand went too he used all his strength to flip around. Wrestling out from under the grip on his arm, the hold slipped, letting him bring up a leg and kick the man back so savagely that the near by car he flew up against got a cracked passenger window.

Panting, Sam struggled to prepare himself before the next blow came. But the night lurched and tilted, his head so fuzzy he could barely keep the horizon from tipping sickeningly back and forth. Any upper hand he had was gone with his mobility. Knowing where he’d be all night he hadn’t bothered to arm himself with even a blade. When he saw the shadow move towards him again he knew that this had one conclusion no matter how long he’d somehow prolonged it. Knowing if his life wasn’t about to end, the only other thing in his arsenal for probable long term survival sat in his jacket pocket.

There wasn’t much time before the back door of that sedan swung open and he was flung against it. Keeping himself upright on the car’s roof, he found his phone and pressed the buttons he knew without seeing them. All he could do was send up a flare into his sky. The rest was up to the mobile phone towers. Before he could do much else besides hope he had hit the right number his hand was tugged away with an excruciating rotation on his wrist. His jacket was pulled off as he was swung around and shoved into the car. The other side of the handcuff squeezed down on his other wrist as he was pressed down with a knee behind his neck into the backseat.

The crushing weight abruptly vanished and he wheezed in a gulp of air, wincing at the knowledge that both his hands were now useless. Even worse he had allowed himself to be maneuvered right into the waiting vehicle.

A small, startled noise came from the girl sitting in the front passenger's seat.

Sam’s chest hitched as he found it an effort to keep breathing, all his muscles sluggish and like lead. Unable to move his head, he watched the leather wallet open and a hefty wad of cash pulled out. He glimpsed her taking it quickly, shoving it into her bag like she didn’t really want to see it.

“I’m sorry.” She muttered to him as she swung her legs outside the car door.

Blearily, he watched her too clean and arranged clothes receding. Even her crisp unused leather bag. The ThinkPad, had she even used it besides just turning it on? The driver was in complete shadow, the profile even lost to him as it doubled and tripled before resuming one single shape again. Twisting his wrists behind him, he fought back the urge to vomit and struggled to get up off his face. By the time he had righted himself he felt the whoosh of air seal off as the door beside him slammed closed.

Sam tried to speak but his throat just worked uselessly. He saw the faint outline of a man lean back between the front seats and yank the seatbelt around his hips, clicking it in place and making sure the shoulder fit snug across his collar bone.

He automatically struggled again when a cool dry hand reached behind him and lingered carefully on his wrist, checking his heart beat against the face of a watch. The seatbelt hindered any movement he had left, the thick nylon strap giving him no yield as it cut into his thin shirt as he strained forward. His knees were jammed into the lean of the front seats, the cramped space subduing him as efficiently as the metal digging into the small of his back. When the gentle grip was gone the engine rumbled to life with the click of the ignition.

Sam fought against his tunneling vision, a light icy sweat breaking out over his skin. His consciousness wavered from nauseatingly dizzy down to deeper wells of a black out that was creeping up on his edges. Forcing his muscles to fight again, he raced from fragile calm to the line of bright hot panic.

He didn’t know why but he had been totally and utterly intercepted. Probably every beer that girl had bought him had had something extra in it. The man behind the wheel sighed as they slowed for a red light that stopped just before the exit ramp that would lead them out onto the freeway. He could almost hear his brother’s voice right in his ear calling him ten kinds of fucking stupid.

Sam felt his eyes slip closed and silently agreed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There had been a fire here.

Sam knew that before he had even opened his eyes. The heavy acrid scent of it was hanging in the warm air like smoke that never faded away. Invisible and poisonous, it leeched off leaning charred timbers and rose from crumpled outlines of doors and furniture reduced to thick ash. The almost sweet smell of burnt lumber was nothing like the deep white smolder off a clean wood fire. The fresh white pine crackling its sap under a forest night sky didn’t have the same chemical mix of melted plastic appliances and wires fused into the once molten walls.

He weakly tested his hands that ached in a steady throb that matched his slow pulse. Gradually, his entire body began to register just exactly where and how it was doing. Sam reluctantly opened his eyes, straightening his head stiffly from where his chin had almost been resting on his chest.

Flexing his fists he nervously swallowed when he saw what it was that he was dealing with. They weren’t the fanciest or the most cutting edge but they were thick and shiny. Polished well oiled steel fastened each of his wrists down to a sturdy wooden chair. They were individual like clamps, locked down under the wide armrests. He couldn’t get a good look at his ankles but it felt like the same pressure and bulky weight. Strangely enough, a very old and ordinary leather belt was strapped around his waist to keep him properly seated even when he had been checked out.

Clearing his head, he took a deep breath of the stale air and allowed himself to switch his immediate converging thoughts of fear aside to assess his surroundings. It was lit just barely with the gray dawn through a long floor to ceiling window that was missing half its dusty squares of glass. From the height of the ceiling and the flat pigment of the paint he knew this was some part of something that had once been industrial. But he had been correct about the barren traces of a long past inferno.

The beige paint was cracked and boiled into blisters. The flames had stained the ceilings to pitch with its smoke, and blackened the mouth of the only door that lead into the large space he had been left in. There were a few scattered chairs across the gritty tile floor and a table with nothing on it but a coating of dust that was mostly ash. The chairs weren’t empty however. One of them had a large knife lying on it. It was a good half a foot and gleaming dully in the meager glow of the morning. But that wasn’t what made Sam swallow back down hard again. The nervous tightness in his chest shifting swiftly past apprehension and into startled dreaded recognition.

There was a circle around him.

An almost perfect circle of salt.

Staring down at it he saw that another circle joined the white curve just a few inches outside its meticulously unbroken circumference. Brittle and thin, it was unmistakably put down with a stick of chalk. In a weird pastel like little kids used to mark up the sidewalks in front of their houses. The second circle was dotted with smaller versions of the same around its edge filled with symbology. Trying to stop the steady uneasy rise of his breathing, he saw some marks that he knew as well as his own name. However, others were things he had never seen before.

Things Sam had never seen before tended to be cause for concern.

Seeing how far he could turn his hands before the flesh started to sting with warning he felt his mind start to empty. The jumbled flood of questions and confusion sinking back to a low murmur in the back of his head. He couldn’t lose his shit. Not now. The way he had been taught was to know what exactly you were in and just how deep. First things first and most importantly, was he about to die? No one would go through all this if they wanted him simply dead. They could have done that back in the back of that bar and this would all be over already. However, that didn’t mean someone didn’t want him to die somewhere else.

Looking down at the elaborate signs and shapes made with cheap chalk, he knew someone had gone to a lot of trouble to get him here like this. This was someone from his world, someone who walked through the photo negative of the strip malls and the calendar holidays. This had been planned. Planned well in advance and with caution. He felt himself make fists again as he remembered the pretty girl’s smile. He had always been a little proud of his fixed simmer of paranoia. He maintained an exhausting vigilance even when everything called for a lowering of the guard. After every time he had second guessed his stubborn hesitance to put it all away when his brother questioned it, Sam had gone right ahead and proved himself right all along.

Shutting his eyes he imagined that the phone call he'd placed had worked. It would be almost nothing. A blip. A strange hang up on his brother’s list of incoming calls. But it didn’t take much. It would be enough to set off the first of the many motions that would make Dean realize something wasn’t right. Sam listened to the almost calm sound of his inhales and exhales. If it had gone through at all.

A sudden soft clicking noise made him snap his eyes open.

Confused, he blinked at the room’s startling bright luminosity. Unsure of what he was looking at, he blinked again at the opposite wall with all its murky details now all glaringly clear under a sheet of light that stretched in a perfect elongated rectangle. The edge of it cut into the door way and Sam saw it reflecting back in the room beyond in a thin dazzling sliver. The brilliance of it stuttered for a moment, a fuzzy line running across its surface and then settling back again.

It was artificial light. Like a movie screen with a film projector.

Knowing it must be coming from somewhere right behind him he tried to turn and see its source. He couldn’t see anything but the continuance of space at his back. The light swiftly changed from stark white and chaotically became moving technicolor. The space it was broadcasting on was so vast that the images took a moment to make sense. It was the flash of traffic, zipping past the camera lens so closely that the unmistakable form and sight of a motel was lost and then there again every several seconds. Sam watched, uncertain as to what was being accomplished with this until the angle winked about 90 degrees to the left in a choppy edit of the film maker.

Feeling his brow crease, he saw a distant door open and a person emerge out of one of the many rooms. It was fairly weird to observe yourself. Like hearing a recording of your own voice, your body language and movement were never anything you had quite set in your head. Sam watched himself as the camera panned to follow him. The car hood came up and with a cursory look around, slammed back shut again. The image winked again, this time much dimmer, either from the time of day or the skill of the operator. It was a broad window this time dominating the frame of the damaged wall. Dean was with him this time, sitting opposite in a booth while their mouths moved in some conversation Sam could barely recall having. For some reason he wondered why there was no sound on the patch work of the surveillance.

It blinked again and again.

Store fronts. Rest stops. More motels. Sometimes just wide spans of nothing but the blur of foliage until the camera swung and caught his image walking down a street distracted by something to be read in his hands. Sometimes Dean was there on the film border, almost cut off or included by after thought in preference to the focus of the subject. Most of the time it was just Sam. Snatches and moments that he could numbly determine to have come from all over the country within the last five months.

“Once back in September you bought a dollar beer."

The soft amused voice quickly snapped Sam’s attention away from the unrelenting progress of the rapid succession of images. It felt like the show was drawing to an end, the shots shorter, the distance closer, the frames that once only captured him across the street now boldly had close ups of his face.

"Then you know what you did?” There was a pause followed by a small laugh. “You went and left a five buck tip.”

Sam fought to readjust his blinded eyes into the darkness of the doorway where someone was clearly standing. The sound of the man slowly sent a seep of cold down his spine in his near recognition. Frantically searching the shadows, he fumbled for anything else that would trigger his fogged memory.

"Bet you were even gonna make sure that girl got home safe and sound, weren't you?"

The person was slightly bewildered in the retelling but there was something else coursing right beneath the surface. Sam realized with detached surprise that it was some kind of bland irritation.

“W-Who are you?” He was glad his voice didn’t crack like he thought it would.

“I have to admit...”

The man moved easily into the hectic flashes of light, stopping just as the living photos finally came to a halt. The last frame was blurred, spreading half the wall into a bizarre smear of electronic noise. Most of the Impala was visible as it was backing out of some parallel yellow lines. The curl of the exhaust stilled in a cloud that settled up around it like some artistic rendering that made it appear not quite real. Tall with a stance of concrete, the man stood where the light bisected the fractured picture, his shadow severe and perfectly cut behind him.

“...you sure don’t act like the son of a devil.”

Sam felt his heart skip a beat as it all came together in one tumultuous crashing jolt of comprehension. The brutal but precise assault in the middle of the night. The cautious preparation. This man wasn’t supposed to be out in the world. He was supposed to be rotting in some lock down in the middle of Indiana. This should have never happened. Sam was too careful. Sam never got found unless he wanted to be.

But this man had gone right ahead and done it a second time.

Gordon Walker.


	2. Chapter 2

It was fairly earth-shattering just how much Gordon reminded him of his brother.

In the easy way he smiled, his tone low soft and casual as could be. But the thing that made his heart race and his throat tighten was what was lurked behind all of it. The constant calm appraisal in his manner, a blanket coolness that could shift seamlessly to startling white hot violence. Whatever it was that kept their victims teetering on the thin line of rationale and panic, Sam knew both Gordon and Dean possessed it in abundance.

“You guys should really mix it up once or twice a year.”

Sam tried to camouflage his agitation when Gordon walked behind him out of his sight. When he could no longer see anything in his peripheral vision, he listened just as hard. The small minute sounds of the machinery that had projected a few months of spy work clacked and stopped. With a flicker the room suddenly faded into its former gloom.

“Maybe even more than that.” Gordon reconsidered. “Change of plates at least.”

His boots ground on the floor with enough noise to note that it would be a real effort to get anywhere around this ruin without making your presence known no matter how hard you tried. A hand pressed down onto his shoulder and Sam tensed as it affably patted him twice. It was withdrawn a little quickly, the step away mindful as if his captor was nearing what could be a dangerous animal. Something unpredictable and savage. By the time the man had rounded the circle to lean down to look Sam in the eye he was well outside the line of salt.

“Do you know some folks still recall John just because of that old Chevy?” Gordon smiled a small smile. “Riding that thing around, you two might as well be leaving a forwarding address every time you skip town.”

Sam stared back at him, feeling his wrists move more easily in the metal because of a slick sweat. He was in trouble. He was in really big fucking trouble.

“Gotta say I was guilty of the same for a long time.” Gordon continued as he righted himself and stretched. “But I am no where near as famous as you are.”

“What the hell do you want?”

It was out before Sam could formulate anything better. There wasn’t much else to say anyway and he didn’t have the same talent for snide that his family handled with impunity. All this person had ever wanted before was to end his life but that didn’t seem to be happening this time around. If he didn’t want Sam’s death than he wanted something else. It bothered him a great deal that what it could be had little or nothing to do with the notions of human behavior. This wasn’t for love or money, this was for the land of black and white that this man ruled as judge and jury. The pendulum of his fixed morality was frozen in place. It was a thing Sam knew couldn’t be reasoned with. When reason failed all that was left behind were the basics. With a small sigh, Sam shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The basics were never pretty.

Sam licked at some dried blood on a split lip and wondered with growing trepidation why Gordon hadn't touched him beyond the friendly pat. He was not entirely sure but he knew he was not about to meet the business end of some brass knuckles.

That scared the shit out of him.

Reaching into a back pocket, Gordon pulled out a chunk of chalk and rolled it between his fingertips. Considering Sam again, he crouched down in front of him and tapped the worn nub thoughtfully on the floor. His dark eyes searched Sam’s face for something as he cleared his throat.

“Sorry about this.” Gordon said apologetically.

Moving the chalk, it lightly screeched in a way that set Sam’s teeth on edge. It didn’t bother Gordon much as he pushed down harder cracking off small shards of the stuff as he traced a near perfect oval on the periphery of the arc that paralleled the salt. Sam carefully observed as the simple line was made across its width. This uncomplicated task done, Gordon’s gaze shifted back up to him.

Sam moved uneasily as something strange started to happen. There was a change in the cloud that he’d been ignoring, the daze that pounded in his head with a hang over and who knew what other damage he’d taken on the night before. With every breath he took it appeared to dissipate and fade into a mild rush he sometimes experienced after downing something full of sugar and caffeine. Shaking his head from side to side, he inhaled again, his bruised face and body washing over with not a numb comfort but a return to what passed for better than average. Confused, he sat up straighter and met Gordon’s look.

The man before him repositioned his hand and drew another line through the shape, crisscrossing it down its middle.

The rush swiftly gushed again and Sam felt his head hit the back of the chair. Even though the wood revisited the spot he’d been knocked down on in that parking lot, it felt far way and inconsequential. The last lingering remains of the sickness in his belly vanished and the overwhelming urge to stand took over. His muted senses were becoming vibrantly aware, the low light at the window turning brighter, shining and revealing the room in a sharp clarity. Without thinking he pushed his fists in their binds again, testing the strength of what kept him in place.

The oval was slashed again and again.

Sam started to shake.

Colors had turned into a sum of their solids, all the shades of everything at all blending into cartoonish brightness. His heart was beating quickly but not disagreeably. The air whispered over his exposed skin like he could hear every movement of its passage. Watching the empty table he could see the silky fall of ash and marveled at every small detail in the rise and fall of its uneven surface. He redirected his attention to the burnt walls, the ebony shine of the exposed wooden support beams gleaming like polished obsidian. His body felt as though it no longer had any weight to it. If he stepped out of that window he would be able to fly. The thin fabric of his button up moved on his skin like gentle hands. The bite of the metal felt like something he could shatter with one twitch of his singing muscles.

Sam heard himself gasp as the sensation teetered on the boundary of unbelievable. It was pouring into him, like a flood of water into a vessel too small. He whimpered when he felt no immediate end to the incredible unrelenting deluge.

“S-Stop.”

“Just one more.” Gordon promised.

There was a very fine line between pleasure and agony. The next chalk mark nudged the raucous soaring into an uncontainable roar. Sam trembled uncontrollably as he concentrated on breathing, making his chest rise and fall. That was all he had to do. That was his only focus and job. He had to keep breathing until this stopped, he had to keep his eyes open and just wait—

Gordon reached back down over the symbol and blurred it across the tile with a thumb.

Sam heard his own stifled burst of confounded relief as he felt the vicious draw on all his nerves abruptly go. In stunned disbelief he collapsed back into himself, all his senses cut loose like an axe had come down on a rope pulled taut and close to breaking.

“You know what I find really interesting?” Gordon asked him.

Sam tried to will his limbs to stop shaking so badly that he was actually making noise in his chair. Racked with a violent shiver that ran down his back, all his familiar pain settled heavily back down into his body. The throb of his wounds was redefined and keener, the scrapes and contusions more intense after having just felt what it meant to be as unsubstantial as air. Gordon stood and brushed off the light coating of powder on his hands.

He slipped the chalk back into his pocket and cocked his head at Sam with an open appraisal of appeased curiosity.

“I find it pretty interesting that this stuff has any effect on you at all.”

 

 

 

 

 

Sam had asked for water and was not completely astounded when he got some.

After that he had done nothing but take silent inventory of everything he saw occur in his field of vision. His exits were already clear besides whatever might be behind him. However, he figured on one assurance about dealing with Gordon. This man didn’t leave much to chance. Sam would expect nothing less than the contingencies he’d make himself. Unfortunately, a man like Gordon worked on a set or rules that Sam couldn’t quite wrap his head all the way around no matter how he tried.

Still, he was expecting one thing to happen.

Sam let himself look back at the knife that hadn’t left the chair it had been sitting on since he had first opened his eyes. He'd never really allowed himself to think about just how he dealt with pain. Grinding his jaw, he battled and won the next onslaught of fear that would do nothing but end him faster.

“I’ve got a lot of things to ask you.” Gordon confessed. “And I don’t have a whole lot of time.”

He knew Gordon couldn’t know much but the most rudimentary things about him. A lot of his secrets he had privately hoped died alongside the men and women out there in that dusty saloon that had been leveled to the ground. But nothing like information stayed static for very long.

Sam smiled before he could help himself.

So this was what Gordon wanted. Some intelligence from the other side.

After everything that had gone down, Sam wondered what exactly what the word on the street was these days. There was quite a lot to get wrong. If Gordon knew even half of it Sam was pretty sure that shiny knife would be embedded deep in his chest by now.

Sam blinked knowing he was right. This hunter didn’t know much. Not even half. But he thought Sam knew all sorts of things. Feeling himself slump with some annoyance of his own, Sam used most of his self control to stop from rolling his eyes. Boy, was this dude in for an exhausting exercise in profound disappointment.

He figured if he learned anything from his brother it was how to cut to the chase.

“I don’t know anything.”

Gordon pulled up one of the chairs and straddled it. Crossing his arms on the back, he looked like he was about to tell a funny story.

“You know how often you aren’t by your brother’s side?”

Sam knew Gordon might know all about it in terms of days, minutes and hours.

“You’ve been in this town all by your lonesome for almost two weeks.”

Counting backwards, Sam realized that Gordon was missing maybe about five days. For some reason that made Sam feel almost the best he’d felt in what seemed a long while. Gordon wasn’t flawless no matter how it appeared. It also made sense now why the man had made his move when he had. Things always got more complicated when it was two against one. If Sam hadn’t been off on his own he wouldn’t have been sitting alone in that bar either and Gordon knew it.

“I want to know why you’re here.”

Sam briefly contemplated what Gordon could possibly be thinking. He came up with some pretty fantastic stuff. Clandestine meetings with the black eyed cohorts of the wrong side. Hidden shrines beneath the forgettable rural municipality that boasted having the highest steeple for fifty miles. A thousand different secrets that involved the destruction of everything and all.

Because he wasn’t sure what else to do Sam tried the truth again.

“A job.”

Gordon’s straightforward smile went away but the look in his eyes didn’t change at all.

“There’s nothing going on in this shit hole but some kids tipping a few cows.”

So this hugely informed man also didn’t know what that old mausoleum from the 1950’s had sitting in it either? It was more than completely unrelated but Sam felt his confidence start to creep back anyway. Feeling his back straighten, he let the warmth of it seep up and begin to smother the distracting cold waver of his discipline. Sam let the sound of his rediscovered optimism come right out.

“Wrong again, Gordon.”

From the look on his keeper’s face Sam wondered if this was a terrible time to bring up the bathroom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sam had no idea how it happened but he had managed to fall asleep.

He wasn’t sure what had woken him until he picked up on the steady careful recitation. The Latin was something he himself had repeated many times in as many places. Most of it he knew literally backwards. He even knew some of it in bits and pieces in the various older languages that Gordon was stumbling through now.

Groaning at the return of consciousness, he automatically tried to extend his trapped limbs. Feeling the beginning of a burn that would eventually sink into a sear, his muscles cramped in protest, twitching and tightening under his skin. There were only so many hours the body could comfortably withstand being confined to one position. Sam groggily had a sudden grim idea of what this timeline might entail when he remembered just how long he and his brother had once left this man in even less ideal circumstances.

At least Gordon didn’t expect him to wet his own pants.

Sam had been hoping for some reason that the bathroom request would require some freedom of movement. It turned out the man had come equipped with one of those hand held plastic johns that some hardcore drivers used in the car or the big rigs that had to haul ass all night to make their drops. Sam had to go so badly he didn’t even really care that much that he hadn’t even been given use of his hands. If he closed his eyes and tried real hard he could almost make believe he was unzipping his own jeans.

The light that had never grown much brighter than gray had peaked while he had drifted, its decline looking almost identical to the sunrise. But there was a new yellow glow in the corner. It was an electric lamp that ran on just few batteries. Sam had read a book or three under quite a few of the things growing up.

It occurred to him that Gordon was regarding him warily.

Was all that reading out loud just for him? He yawned, awkwardly trying to stretch what he could as his gaze fell back down on that salt line. So the hunter was trying out everything in his bag of mystical tricks. Sam could have told him that Latin had more of an affect on his older brother. Long term exposure seemed to cause a deep and untroubled slumber.

“You were dreaming.” Gordon commented, looking back to a few leather bound manuscripts that were open on the one and only table. “Didn’t sound like anything good.”

Sam didn’t remember having any. He couldn’t even remember shutting his eyes in the first place. But sure why not? He could take the man’s word for it. Flexing his hands, his thoughts wandered on how there used to be a similar report from his brother who slept never more than six feet away. Dean never mentioned that stuff anymore. Sam had assumed maybe the dreams had vanished along with his knowledge of them. The idea that they might be something that Dean simply accepted as a nightly event made him frown slightly.

The book was flipped closed, sending a roll of ash across the table top.

“Do you want some more water?”

Sam did but he shook his head.

There was something different in Gordon’s stance. He looked ready and charged to begin something difficult. That sigh of anticipatory resignation when you hefted a chainsaw and took in how large a pile of fallen logs you’d have to make into kindling. His sleeves were rolled up. His boots were planted firmly apart on the ground. It was apparently time to clock in and get to work.

Sam braced himself when Gordon came closer. But instead of a fist or that nice sharp blade, he knelt down again at the double circle edge. Sam looked back distrustfully at the books the man had been studying so intently as he had blissfully slept.

Along side the earlier experiment of the oval, another figure was being made. It resembled the numeral eight, possibly some variation of what Sam would have compared to an infinity symbol. It was not quite the same however, and embellished in a few strange ways that made Sam raise an eyebrow with professional skepticism.

When it appeared that all that was going to be done had been done, Gordon looked back up at him expectantly.

Sam dismally waited for something unpleasant to happen. He waited a little more. But nothing was coursing ferociously through him like it had the last time. He paused. Not quite. There was something but it was almost imperceptible. Like a fingertip pressing against the delicate surface of a soap bubble. He felt his perception subtly and oddly compressed. Sam realized he had been holding his breath and let it out. Was that all this fancy new hex Gordon had found could do? Maybe just like the Latin and salt this man had a lot of half baked ideas of just what exactly could goad Sam into spilling what he wanted to hear—

“I’ll start with something simple,” Gordon ground the chalk in place where the mark could be continued. “How many of you things are in this town?”

Looking back at the smeared symbol that almost made his brain go into nuclear over drive, Sam decided what it was he had to do. If Gordon wanted him in pain that was exactly what he’d give him. He’d do it now with this less than harmless chalk ward that felt little more than being poked in the forehead. But this hunter was no fool so whatever it was he was going to do it had to be good. Reaching a decision, Sam gripped the armrests and loudly let his breath catch in his throat. That got Gordon’s attention real quick. Sam had seen exorcisms and the like before. He knew what it looked like.

It was a good thing that faking it was something he did fairly well.

For some authenticity Sam jammed his hands as forward as they could go so the hiss of pain was as real as it could get. The rest he just prayed was even remotely close to what Gordon had been expecting. He had read that actors drew on actual agony they had experienced in their real lives to make what they did seem legitimate. With a deep inhale, he decided to do the same. There were plenty of locked doors in his mind that he could pull wide open if this man needed tears for proof that the magic was doing its thing. Glad he wasn’t that proud, Sam reacted appropriately to the next deliberate line of chalk that was meant to make him scream.

At first it was faintly embarrassing to express suffering when there was none, but it got easier as some time went on.

It got down right effortless whenever he caught sight of that damn knife.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sam was tired.

It was draining to pretend to be writhing in anguish for what he knew was almost four hours. He knew because Gordon kept checking every time his watch went off on a thirty minute mark. His sweat was as real as his limp body felt. For now, he was playing that card for all it was worth.

It hadn’t been a totally smooth four hour ride.

Sam had gotten nervous when the mark had been joined by another one, but it looked like Gordon had lucked out on his very first try with the oval. Every one he gave a roll of the dice to after that one had been a complete bust. If Sam detected anything at all it wasn’t palpable. It was as if he could feel its impact flung up against some barrier around him, falling harmlessly around to either side. Unbeknownst to the determined hunter anyway. The chalk was dropped down onto the ground without a word.

Looked like Gordon was getting a little weary of this game too.

Sam considered what might be coming next. It had been easy to keep repeating he had nothing to say when he really actually didn’t. But Sam had no illusions to his lasting power under actual torture, and he had a good feeling that this man was the type that never gave up very easily.

If there was frustration here at the lack of results, Gordon wasn’t letting any of it through. Wandering over to the table he picked up the open bottle of water he’d been sharing and poured half of it down his throat. The stream of questions he had been repeating over and over as Sam feigned the lashings had yielded nothing but resistance. But instead of the voice growing fiercer and wrathful, everything about Gordon’s demeanor remained on the same level plain. Sam knew there was going to be no build up to the end of this inquisition. He wished there had been some final explosion of anger from the guy. Something harsh and thunderous. Opened handed or closed right across his face. Anything but that unruffled reasoning gaze he was watching Sam with now. If Gordon found him unable to produce, it might just be time to slit a throat and be done with it. Sam felt the fight in him falter at the inevitably of it. He felt his stressed body sag as much as it was able in his chair, his eyes closing in some effort to gather what it was that he had left.

“Your phone just keeps ringing and ringing.”

Looking up sharply, Sam was held back from sitting forward like he wanted to. His phone was here? Glancing around as if he could somehow catch sight of it, he felt a certain weight suddenly lift. He hadn’t let himself think too long on the possibility that his last ditch effort to call for some back up had really worked. If he wasn’t picking up his phone then Dean knew there was a reason. Hell, for all Sam knew his brother could be in town by now walking around in his empty motel room and finding all the reasons to believe something had gone horribly wrong.

The phone in question was slipped out of Gordon’s front shirt pocket. Compact and silver, Sam remembered turning the ringer off at some point during his silent hours of labor in the library the previous day.

“You don’t want to talk but it’s not your fault,” The hunter sat back tiredly into a chair and rubbed at his forehead. “I haven’t been giving you the motivation you need.”

Sam felt his glimmer of hope die away as he listened to those words.

“I’ve been thinking about answering it,” Gordon nodded to himself as he turned the phone in his palm. “I’ve been thinking I could use your brother’s help.”

“I-I told you I don’t know anything—“

“It’s okay, Sammy,” Gordon reassured him. “You're a smart guy. You can always change your mind.”

Sam watched as the man stood and strode to the doorway. Leaning comfortably against its blackened frame he studied the flashing blue face of the cell. Gordon tilted the machine back and forth a few times before deciding which button activated the redial.

“Hello?”

"Gordon..." Sam wrenched his fists in their binds.

"Yeah. Yeah, he’s here." Gordon sounded almost friendly.

"Gordon!" Sam shouted, chest heaving.

"Hold on a minute."

Gordon set the phone down with a sigh and crossed quickly back towards him. A vicious backhand made Sam bite down hard, tasting blood. Fighting a surge of dizziness, he watched the hunter take the phone back up with a small shake of his head as the conversation resumed.

“Sorry about that,” he explained. “That Sammy. He’s a trip.”

As he listened to whatever litany of growled threats and curses were coming from his brother's end, Gordon's face was stoic, waiting patiently. Sam watched with blurring vision as Gordon's hand toyed with the handle of the knife, picking it up and turning it slowly, letting the weak lamplight catch its razor sharp edge.

He hefted it in his hand and idly walked until he stopped outside of the circles on the floor.

"Cut the bull, Dean," Gordon's smile returned. "You won't do shit."

He leaned over Sam, tapping the flat of the blade gently against Sam's cheek. Sam's breath hitched, throat working soundlessly. He had wanted anger and it looked like it had finally arrived.

"Yeah, you got a pen? I’ll give you directions."

Sam listened to the list of roads and avenues that lead to this isolated place. It was farther out of the town than he had considered. But it would still only take Dean less than an hour to get there.

“Sure,” Gordon's dark eyes shifted to meet Sam’s. "He'll be real happy to see you."

Sam could not disagree more.

tbc


	3. Chapter 3

Sam kept looking down at those gashes of chalk that lay around his feet on the cracked tiles.

He wasn’t positive but he was considering that maybe they were having a slight influence on him after all. At least to his hearing. Maybe even his sight. Remembering how it felt like his perception had been nudged, he wondered if it had been just like having a camera suddenly sharply thrust into focus. You never quite knew how dull a picture was until it was brought into crystal clear relief.

The deserted halls and rooms all around him seemed to have been stripped of everything. An old place like this probably had most of the plumbing pulled out of the walls too. What was left was a hollow shell of poured cement and holes in the dry wall where the light fixtures used to be. Traveling quietly through the corridors was like trying keep your voice down in a church. From every direction you could hear the movement of anything that walked the coarse floor.

Sam’s gaze fell down to his right arm.

It was always his right arm for some reason. Just before that vague crease of skin on the inner elbow, there was the place that doctors, nurses, and when duty called even his father had deemed the best place to use a needle. The science of it was the ready availability of a vein. Someone who knew what they were doing only had to look, feel and tap the skin to find the most likely area to pierce. Sam remembered being fascinated at the fact that the professionals who knew their stuff always came to the same spot time and time again over the span of years.

Just like Gordon had.

After the cell phone had been clicked closed, Gordon had quickly gone back to work. His urgency hadn't surprise Sam. The first thing to happen was the appearance of a worn nylon duffel bag and the medical kit. There was no use resisting or even asking what he was being given from the compact sterile syringe. Knowing only that it wasn’t the remedy for existing, Sam had watched the rubber garrote secured on his bicep and the peculiar bulge it gave the paths of blood under his skin.

The effects had been immediate. In a sense it was a reprieve. No one could complain too much about having pain taken away. He waited for it to make a turn for the worse but found it didn’t have the power to render him completely useless. Incoherent maybe, but he was still aware of what was going on. Feeling his eyes roll up, he caught himself, steeling his will against the weighty lull. Gordon would be arming himself and inspecting whatever provisions he’d made to rig the place. He should be checking connections he’d left sitting for too many hours and making sure everything that had been neatly orchestrated was in the green.

But Gordon seemed to be doing nothing but packing.

Sam watched the two books that sat on the table be put away. The knife sank into an old leather sheath before it joined them in the bag. There wasn’t much else in the room besides the water and Sam’s phone. Gordon left those as they were. Shouldering his duffel and without much ceremony, he made his exit.

Gordon’s footsteps vanished when he reached the brief spans of cement stairs. They were the only moments of absolute silence of his passage once he left the room. The place was so big and quiet the sound of the jammed door screeching on the ground from two floors down was easy to detect amongst the whole lot of nothing that filled the place up and down. Sam waited for the distinct echo of footfall making a return trip back from the outside. Instead, the cough and unmistakable stutter of a car engine erupted directly below the window. The gears were quickly engaged and it backed up first before it was set into drive, the tires rolling over asphalt.

Sam sat tensely waiting to identify any trace of the man’s presence somewhere below him. Counting to distinguish natural noises from the equally random racket of the man made, Sam inadvertently began cataloguing time. After three interminable quarters of an hour crawled by, he started to wonder if what he had heard was maybe exactly what it had sounded like.

Had Gordon just left?

Feeling the keen soak of the drug turn down off its peak, he started to feel more disjointed and worn down than he already was. All he could to do was sit back and watch. A passive bystander of a turn of events over which he had absolutely no control.

It figured when it happened he always got a front row seat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When he heard the sounds of trespass again, he knew it wasn’t the hunter who had returned.

It was so subtle at first he thought that maybe he had caught up the far away drip of water that had thrown him when he first began his watch. But the unsteady tread soon made itself known. It wasn’t moving in sure broad lengths of space. Starting and stopping, examining and searching. It was someone completely different. The near silent quality of the cautious exploration was as identifiable as a fingerprint.

Sam nervously waited for the sound of a scuffle. But he had never heard Gordon's car return. That didn’t matter too much. He had never heard the Impala arrive either. Despite that, he would bet all the money that wasn’t in his pocket that the person down there on the first floor walking as vigilantly as a man in a mine field was his brother.

Considering how much time had past Sam wondered just how long Dean had spent on the property’s perimeter before gritting his teeth and taking the plunge. Gaining entrance without incident so far hadn’t taken much of the suspicion out of his step however. Sam was glad. He didn’t know what was going on here but nothing made any sense. He supposed Gordon could have doubled back and had some how returned unnoticed. The man could be down there with the immobile stillness of a statue, waiting for Dean to cross his path. Sam shifted in the metal feeling for the first time how deadened his limbs had gone with the drug he’d been shot up with.

He considered it might not be possible for him to walk. That would make the challenge of getting the hell out of here just fantastic. It felt like a good sign when he could smile at the thought of his tribulations somehow exponentially growing more dire.

The cessation of footsteps indicated Dean’s first ascent up the flight of stairs Sam had deduced were on the far left of the building. As Sam suspected, the sounds came back, loud and clear when his brother reached the second story. There was nothing keeping Sam from alerting Dean just exactly where he was. But something about it all still made him nervous.

Still counting, it was just about another full hour before Sam knew Dean was on the same floor as he was.

When the familiar profile suddenly appeared in the doorway, Sam felt himself experience a relief he knew he should keep stowed until they were far away from this place. Dean stayed in the shadows, studying him and the room.

“He’s not in here.” Sam said.

His voice cut through the silence and set Dean into motion again. Even with the all clear he still hesitated before swinging around the corner with his pistol cocked and ready. After checking it was truly safe he stepped closer allowing Sam to finally see his face.

Dean shrugged at him, his hands slightly raised in a wary question.

“Where the hell is he?” He whispered in annoyance.

Sam felt as detached from the danger as he did from his pain. Even though his brother and freedom were just a short distance away he couldn’t seem to bring himself to care very much. All he wanted to do was stop listening and counting in the dark. He wanted to go to sleep. He felt himself talking and realized the drugs were harder than he thought.

“I think he left.”

He knew the answer was ludicrous but he was thankful to see it caused Dean to look him up and down. Dean would get it. He’d figure out that Gordon had done something to send him out of whack. His brother’s assessment lingered on his eyes. His pupils must have been blown because Dean didn’t bother asking him much after that. Except the question Sam knew was coming no matter what.

“Are you okay?”

Sam nodded heavily, watching Dean flip out the Swiss army like tool that kept all his picks in order. Raising an eyebrow down at the salt and chalk, his brother stepped over it without another glance. Crouching down he quickly examined the grade and oddly positioned locks that kept Sam in place. Dean made a small sound of approval at their quality and promptly went to business.

“Let’s not question a great thing, huh?” Dean murmured as he slipped the thin hook into the lock’s chamber. “We can high five later.”

Sam let his head fall back, knowing the work would take a few minutes and keeping his head level was becoming difficult to accomplish. He felt the gentle tugs on his right wrist as Dean manipulated its mechanism, swearing under his breath when one of the tumblers slipped out from under the delicate procedure.

With a jerk and the click of a loaded spring lock, the band that sat bulky on Sam’s wrist shifted.

“Shit.” Dean hissed.

Sam looked down wondering why his hand wasn’t free yet. Trying to focus on the handcuff he saw its lock was still in place despite what Dean had done.

Gripping his hand, Dean muttered another curse. Sam watched him in bleary confusion. Dean was holding up his hand and blinking at a thick drop of blood running down his palm.

“D-Dean?” Sam asked.

“S’okay.” Dean answered strangely.

Taking a deep breath, his brother leaned over the lock again and attempted to continue the job. Sam’s uneasiness grew as Dean’s fingers fumbled on the pick, losing his grip over and over again.

“Gimme just- just a second.” He stuttered, blinking rapidly.

Dean suddenly sat back hard, landing on the floor and holding out his hand where the small pin prick had stopped bleeding. Sam looked back down at the metal bind and saw what he had missed before. The short end of a needle was sticking out laterally from its side. It was what had been released when he heard the spring go.

His brother tried to stand up but he didn’t get very far. The heavy gun clattered nosily onto the floor when Dean attempted to draw it.

So Sam had been right. Gordon had left after all. Drove off and maybe decided to go kill a few hours by going to that multiplex cinema a few towns over off the highway.

He shut his eyes.

The building hadn’t been rigged.

Sam had.

 

 

 

 

 

 

More than a few hours past before Sam heard the car again.

He hadn’t taken his eyes off Dean’s body since his brother had collapsed several feet away from the chair. He hadn’t moved since. With growing dread, Sam kept expecting him to stop breathing but Dean’s chest continued to slowly rise and fall. Once again, it looked like Gordon wasn’t interested in making a killing. He wanted another wide awake person for the work to continue. When the door below opened again, Sam jerked at his fists in frustration.

When Gordon stopped in the doorway, a curious repetition of his brother’s own pattern, he nodded at the sight of what he found inside the room.

“What did I tell you about that ride, Sam?” Gordon was shaking his head. “Saw that Chevy off the access road a few miles east.”

Gordon started towards him, Dean’s body laid out in front of his chair like Sam had done the act himself. The hunter paused over his brother, Dean's jacket fallen off one shoulder in a strange and unintentional display of vulnerability that made Sam’s jaw clench. Gordon tugged the leather the rest of the way off and tossed it aside. But his expression of subtle victory shifted. It changed to something like wary concern as he considered the brand new issue that wouldn't stay safe and sound in oblivion for long.

Gordon, the man with the plan, didn’t seem to have thought much beyond what he’d do if the other Winchester appeared on the scene. Apparently besides making sure to deliver a hefty dose of whatever had tipped that needle. When the duffel opened again, Sam saw he had rightly assumed his special seat had been brought in on purpose just for his confinement. A coiled heap of shiny thin twine was flung on the table as Gordon took a look around the room for his options.

It looked like only Sam was getting the fancy locks for their stay. Dean would have to settle for good old fashioned ropes. The braided kind that people strung up across their back yard to hang wet laundry on. Without much further thought Gordon walked over to the huge window and got low enough to get a firm grab under its metal chipped frame. Sam stilled when the intention behind opening the thing wasn’t immediately clear. However, it became simple enough to figure out once the pane of wired glass slid up with a raw shriek. It was barred. Sam’s thoughts drifted to the fire that had most likely closed this place down. There was probably a job or two slithering down in the basement considering all the safety codes the owners had violated before it all went up in smoke.

Dean groaned when Gordon sat him up against the wall and then hefted him up to take a seat on the window sill. The aging metal flaked when the rope was run through it, hissing snugly around his brother’s wrists. Gordon studied the project for a moment before he looped and doubled the rope around Dean’s throat and chest. With a nod of satisfaction, he put his boot up against the wall for leverage and quickly began drawing up the slack hand over hand. Sam winced when Dean made a choked sound as the rope zipped tight around his neck. With one strong yank Gordon fixed his brother firmly against the metal bars and started another thick elaborate knot to make sure he stayed there. There was a rusty length of pipe running down close to the floor, its joints indistinguishable with too many hasty drooping coats of paint. A few more tugs and Dean’s ankles were secured along with everything else.

“How are you feeling, Sammy?” Gordon asked him over a shoulder.

For some reason the tone and sincerity of it reminded Sam uncomfortably of when Dean had asked close to the same thing. His gaze wandered to the frayed ends of the twine that hung off the nearly decorative knots around his brother’s wrists.

“Undone.” Sam concluded, pleased that the word came out like it should have and not some meaningless slur.

Dean had barely stirred throughout the entire process. Sam felt somewhere under his fog that this was an excellent thing. If his brother had been even a little aware of any of his handling during this peaceful procedure things would have been more than a lot different.

“Don’t-Don’t bother with him,” Sam swallowed, forcing his slipping eyes to look the hunter in the face. “He’s not even… one of… one of us.”

He wanted to laugh after he heard what it sounded like out loud. Mostly because it was true. Dean wasn’t on the play list in the great evil scheme of things. Dean wasn’t enlisted or even considered a pawn in the enormous unfathomable field the game pieces played on. At least that was what Sam imagined might have been the case if the war had even been given a chance to start.

Gordon seemed to feel the same way because there was no salt line or chalk being placed around the window. Curious, Sam glanced up at the ceiling for anything he might have missed. The fractured plaster was gently spiraling but Sam was fairly sure that there was nothing paranormal about it. There were a few potent chemicals pumping through his head that were responsible for that show.

He watched his brother’s jacket be systematically checked before being draped onto one of the chairs. When Gordon was done he turned his attention back to the man he’d lashed to the window frame. Sam felt the tension in his jaw go from rigid to aching. He was staring at Gordon. Staring at those hands that went from benign to vicious in as less time as it took to blink.

“Don’t touch him.”

He felt his muscles stiffen when Gordon stopped himself before kneeling down at Dean’s side. The man gave a smile that made Sam wished he could dismantle, fist by unflagging fist. He wanted to make Gordon feel like never smiling again. When Gordon got down on one knee, he slipped a hand to the side of Dean’s throat. After a moment, he moved up to feel a wrist. Satisfied that the body was stable, he started the thorough search for what Dean had undoubtedly concealed all over his person. The extra light weight pistol was taken away. The short blunt blade at his ankle went next. The gleam of the Zippo. A pack of matches and some keys.

It was infuriating seeing his older brother treated like some convenient salvage.

Sam’s fists started to hurt when he watched his brother’s shirt yanked up, his belt taken away and his jean pockets turned inside out. The drugs spun his thoughts too tight around his mind’s spindle, driving every act and sound he witnessed down like a spiked nail under a hammer.

“ _I-I said stop it._ ”

He didn’t recognize his own voice. It escaped like he couldn’t breathe, but he knew he was breathing too hard.

“Don’t worry,” Gordon murmured absently, distracted by the arsenal he was laying out on the floor. “I’m about done here.”

The hunter was taking a look at the twin thin blades he’d found strapped to either of Dean’s wrists. With a downward appreciative turn of his mouth, he crisscrossed them both before sliding them in a back pocket.

It was right then that Sam felt it.

It was like a wind had blustered and gusted from nothing. All around him it blew just strong enough to unsettle all the dust in the room. At least that was what Sam thought at first. It was powerful enough to make Gordon almost lose his balance in the crouch he was in, his shirt billowing with its passage, one hand going out behind him to stop from teetering backwards. Dean’s hanging head briefly lifted, unconsciously reacting to the feel of something brushing up against his face.

Startled, Gordon looked up at Sam swiftly and backed up a few steps.

Gasping, Sam felt about as stunned as the hunter appeared.

He suddenly felt his head start to dissolve into that blank white wall of numb before the agony settled in. Shaking his head, he tried to will it away before it hit, staving off what he knew could be more terrible than just about anything this hunter could come up with.

“That’s a neat trick, Sammy,” Gordon said carefully from somewhere above him. “Looks brand new.”

The wash of noise stuck the inside of his skull in a wave, colliding up against the back of his eyes and blinding him. It was just like the bill he had to pay for every single one of his vivid unwanted revelations. It was the same toll but somehow even worse, crashing down inside of him like it wanted to cave him in.

Distantly, he heard the man drag his boot over the floor and knew he was blurring the symbols that circled him like planets.

“Let’s see if you can do it again.”

Sam struggled to his meet his eyes.

“Dean will love it.”


	4. Chapter 4

It was dawn again when Sam first looked up long enough to notice the dismal seep of light stretching in new patterns across the floor.

For the second time, the sun silently rose on the unseen horizon. With the window wide open he could see the dark blanket of clouds that had muted the day. Being a captive you couldn’t help but notice the slightest change in the details of your four walls. A low rumble of thunder sounded deep from overhead and a flashing stutter of lightening forced Sam to briefly shut his eyes. The bright rectangle of the window remained burned on his retinas, broken by the stark silhouette of his brother’s outstretched arms.

Gordon didn’t hide his yawn.

The book he had been flipping through in his lap was placed tiredly on the table. Sam watched him carefully, wondering how urgent this timetable could possibly be if the guy had time to sit around catching up on Latin phraseology. But he felt as worn out as Gordon looked. Over the past few hours Sam had caught himself dozing as the chemical worked its way through his system, leaving him bleary but awake on the other side.

He tensed when Gordon paused, rocking slightly on his heels as he assessed the state of those under his charge. It was pretty much a given by now that Sam wasn’t going anywhere but Dean as usual tended to be an entirely different story. Wondering why there was any doubt left behind the array of knots Gordon had laced with care, Sam felt the heavy dull throb in his head shift painfully when he turned to observe his brother. Dean still hadn’t woken up. Knowing Gordon wasn’t beyond dosing either of them with something more potent, he waited anxiously for any sign of his brother’s awareness as the cords already cinched into his skin were pulled and tested.

Satisfied that all was well, Gordon sighed as he turned to regard Sam with a small look. His dark gaze flickered back down to the floor where all the symbols had been smeared into arced stretches of pastel powder. Sam swallowed, realizing that Gordon might actually know just a little about what he was doing with those things after all. All the heightened sensitivity and then that weird burst of energy that came from nowhere? Glancing back at the book on the table, he wondered if that was the reason for all the late-night cramming. Gordon might be playing Russian roulette with what he found but that didn’t make the spin of the chamber any less dangerous.

“I’m a light sleeper.”

So it was time for some shut eye.

"Night." Sam muttered.

As soon as Gordon’s footsteps retreated down the corridor, Sam tried to listen to the direction of the hunter’s path as he had done before. But looking down at the ruin of the chalk symbols he knew that his hyper awareness had faded with their shape. Sam turned his attention swiftly to his brother.

“Dean?” Sam whispered. “Hey? Dean!”

If Gordon yanking at a rope around his neck didn’t rouse him, somehow Sam doubted he would be able to. Sam fought the urge to try to rip out of his chair. The awkward slump of Dean’s body didn’t twitch even after raising his voice loud enough to possibly draw Gordon back from wherever he had gone. After a few minutes Sam gave up and considered that maybe it was better that Dean was out of it for as long as possible. Sitting back, he found he didn’t really want to explain what was going on here anyway. The salt line and the chalk would create inevitable questions now that there was some time to kill. Sam would do a lot to keep away the look Dean got in his eyes when he was forced to recognize he didn’t know everything about his own flesh and blood. Sam didn’t want that horrible free fall of the unknown anymore than his brother did.

Ready to settle into the silence by himself, Sam was startled by the sudden garbled stream of words from the window. Like a needle dropped on a record, Dean was unexpectedly awake and speaking. It was incoherent but it was something. Sam dropped his desire for quiet as soon as his brother’s eyes opened.

“Hey,” Sam tried to bring Dean’s disoriented gaze over in his direction. He made an effort to keep the waver out of his voice. “You still alive?”

Still lost in the in between total black out and waking, Dean wearily nodded in response. His back straightened as he reestablished contact with his limbs. Finding some focus, his rapid comprehension of the situation was remarkable considering how long he’d been dead to the world. With a dawning anger, Dean absorbed the sight of his trapped hands in the shiny loops of cord. Immediately tensing, he shoved himself backwards in a violent effort to wrench free. The outrage grinded gears for a moment when he felt the tight loop around his throat. Sam cringed at the rasp of the twine as it rubbed raw on the metal bars. Knowing what he’d done to his own wrists and ankles in the first hours of denial, he waited until Dean’s brief but admirable burst of steam ran out.

“G-Gordon…” Dean growled thickly. “…Gordon!”

“Throttle down, Dean,” Sam said. “It’s just us.”

Catching his breath, his brother took in their surroundings with watering eyes. Finding Sam correct, he redoubled his efforts of escape.

“Can y-you move?” Dean asked.

Sam sighed, his exhaustion coming down in one solid weight on his shoulders.

“Geeze.” Dean didn’t pause in working his right wrist in a steady back and forth motion. “Just askin’.”

He knew that between the two of them, Dean had a better chance at freedom. They had been taught how to get out of just about anything given the right amount of time and persistence. Some involved your head and some took wearing your skin down to a bloody abrasion while you loosened up a rope.

“So?” Dean began conversationally. “What does he want?”

Sam felt himself staring down at the double ring that had been placed around his chair. Stopping his hands from fidgeting on the armrests he met Dean’s groggy gaze hesitantly.

“I don’t know.”

Dean sagged slightly.

"Perfect."

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gordon didn’t sleep the day away like Sam had hoped.

A change of shirt and a shave had made the scant few hours he had been missing seem like he’d gone to bed for a full eight on something comfy. Sam inwardly prayed that the silent study would continue but he knew better than to expect miracles. Even huge ones like his brother overcoming his complete inability to keep his damn mouth shut.

“Hiya Gordon.”

“Good to see you again, Dean.”

If Sam imagined a crowded bar and a couple of beers it all seemed almost sociable. Gordon even spared him a smile that made Sam's stomach churn. As forecasted, it all went south fairly fast.

“Gordon, you better hope I never get outta here.”

“Funny you should say that,” Gordon scraped one of the chairs forward to take a seat between them. “Those chances are pretty good.”

“What’s the deal?” Dean questioned with upturned hands. “You get lonely?”

Gordon caught Sam’s guilty look and held it in place.

“Sammy here. I could turn on the heat for a real long time before he starts to fry,” Gordon gave Sam a nod of begrudging respect. “But that kind of work takes more time than I have. I need answers."

“Answers.” Dean repeated blankly.

“By tonight if he’s obliging.” Gordon added.

“Why?” Dean asked. “You got a date?”

“Something like that.”

“Lucky girl,” Dean muttered but then reconsidered and shrugged. “Or whatever.”

There was a different blade in Gordon’s grip. Sam recognized it as one of Dean’s own. A small thin razor that fit tidily under his palm, easily hidden below a sleeve and always whetted fine enough to neatly cut paper. Sam's mouth was moving before he even knew what he was saying.

“Gordon, I-I told you, I don’t know anything, I’m not—“

Dean didn’t make a sound when the knife flashed over him. Not at first. He probably wouldn’t have either if Gordon hadn’t kept drawing the edge around his forearm about as slow as he was able. The nerve endings around the hands were always so much more receptive than other parts of the body. The billions of pinpoints were all bundled up through the skin so densely that even the slightest scratch drew an entire body’s attention. Dean got quiet again before it stopped, Gordon creating another perfect circle. His brother worked his jaw before he got himself back under enough control to summarize what was on his mind.

“Goddamnit.”

Wiping the blade clean on Dean’s sleeve, Gordon wet his lips and flipped the weapon back into his palm. Using the knife tip for emphasis he pointed at Sam.

“This'll hurt." Gordon guaranteed him.

Sam hated that he could barely hear his own voice.

“Don’t.”

Gordon took advantage of Dean’s distraction with the line of blood running down to drip on the thigh of his jeans. It figured a gag was coming sooner or later. Sam watched his go brother livid as the strip of leather was shoved between his teeth. Silently grateful that Dean would have something to bite down on, he almost wanted to tell Gordon that he was on his side for this one.

Dean would probably live a lot longer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It didn’t go exactly like Sam had pictured.

Gordon was supposed to ask him questions and then retaliate when there was nothing forthcoming deemed worth while. He was supposed to threaten with the knife until Sam stammered out all the details the man had been dying to hear ever since they’d been reacquainted. Sam had formulated several trains of thought that he believed would keep him off his brother for at least a certain amount of time.

But apparently the hunter's motives were purely an elective.

Saying no as loud as he was able hadn’t done much. The maddening boundary of begging wasn’t left unused either. When Sam degenerated into mindless cursing he started to see stars at how viciously he strained against his binds. The heavy wood chair rocked twice under his struggles but still didn’t grant him the use of his hands. Gordon didn’t even look in his direction as he touched the edge of the blade again and again over his brother’s skin. The cuts he made were shallow and even. In a strange way, they reminded Sam of the collection of knots Gordon had made. Perfectly spaced and matching in length, the lines started to appear like something ritual and ornamental running from wrist to elbow. As superficial as the slashes were, they bled well enough.

It didn't appear as though he was showing any signs of stopping, though. Dean's breathing had grown labored behind the gag, his movements no more than a mild jerk to the excruciating slice of the blade.

"Hey!" Sam shouted, surprised when Gordon actually turned around calmly to look at him. "W-What happened to the next round of twenty questions?"

"We'll get to that," Gordon promised, gesturing behind him with a toss of his head. “I was just wondering what it would take.”

Sam didn’t understand.

“What are you talking about?”

Gordon’s voice took on a distant curious quality to it. Like an artist considering one more stroke of paint. Like a huntsman wondering if a few more moments would move the target into the absolute center of the crosshairs. Sam knew it was the air of a man that liked to do things properly.

“To get that look off your brother’s face.”

Dean had stopped watching and had leaned his head back against the bars. His skin was pale and pearly with sweat. Sam watched him trying to even his breathing. It was what he had done himself when he wasn’t sure when the pain was going to stop. He didn’t want to say anything more. He didn’t want to disrupt his brother’s attempts to remove himself as far away from the agony as he could. If you did it right you could detach yourself entirely. If you were perfect you could objectively observe what was happening to you without experiencing any of it all. Gripping the damp wood under his hands, Sam listened to Dean’s muffled whimper and knew Dean was a long ways away from perfection.

Gordon bent low to whisper in Sam’s ear.

“Ok. Now I'm ready."

When the man took his seat again, he seemed to be geared up for something he’d set aside. Something reserved and exceptional to be saved. With a certain eagerness, he pulled up the bag that contained the books. The knife was put away.

"Some of these signs are meant for the real bad stuff,” Gordon murmured as he bent down, the chalk hissing along the ground. “The kind of things that crawl red and raw straight outta hell.”

Sam sent a nervous look in his brother’s direction. Jaw grinding over the leather in his mouth, Dean didn’t look anything but in pain and pissed off.

“But those signs haven't had much effect,” Gordon explained. “In fact, it’s like I can see it bouncing right off you. Like it doesn’t quite take.”

“Go me.” Sam mumbled.

The hunter ignored him.

“Now these on the other hand…” Gordon nodded down at the first of three circles he had yet to amplify into something more complex. “A few of these seem to sink in right where you can feel it. At least a little. Sometimes a lot.”

“What are they?” Sam asked with real curiosity.

Since when did signs made to manipulate demons ever have an effect on him? He drew and touched things like that everyday and he’d never felt a thing.

“They weren’t easy to find,” Gordon said. “But a couple hundred years ago some monk out in Italy thought it would be a good idea to make wards for the imbued.”

“Imbued?” Sam frowned, trying to not to notice Dean’s uneasy shift in his binds. “What-what does that mean?”

“You know, I’m still not quite sure,” Gordon admitted. “But it’s an interesting term to use don’t you think? It comes up on every other page of that dusty book. My old Italian is pretty bad but I think that dead monk was on to something.”

Sam blinked down in confusion when Gordon held up a jumble of metal and shook it noisily a few times. Recognizing them as the car and skeleton keys that his brother kept on his person like most people would harbor the deed to their house, he moved apprehensively when the collection was pushed over into the chalk ring.

“Do you know what else I read?” Gordon had begun the first slash of ornamentation on the center mark he had created. “The other word that old monk used over and over was ‘human shadow’.”

Sam was staring down at nothing hard but he could feel his brother listening to every word.

“It got me thinking," Gordon said not without some amusement. "Maybe you mostly are human? In fact, I think you might be something I’ve never heard of before.”

“Gordon...” Sam tensed as the second line was drawn down over the symbol. “It doesn’t work like that. I’m not tied in. I don’t have any connection with—“

Sam froze as the air rippled up around him.

His body went rigid in a wash of cold that felt like ice water had been poured over his head. He felt his teeth start to rattle before he realized that the entire room had begun to shake. A fracture ripped up one of the walls in a cloud of dust and opaque brittle glass cracked in the panes. The room blinked out and for a moment he panicked with sudden blindness. But before he could even start to think about kissing his cool composure goodbye, it all abruptly came back. With a few blinks the dim room returned to focus.

But something was wrong.

The constant view Sam had had for the past 24 hours had changed. The wall, door and unreachable hallway beyond were replaced. It took him a moment to realize that what he was looking at was himself. Seated in that sturdy wooden chair and head flung backwards, he was somehow observing his own body from across the room.

Whipping back into his own head with a nauseating speed, he choked on his next inhale, his body having seized into immobility during his brief absence. Flexing his hands to make sure he was actually there, he inhaled again surprised when no discomfort followed. It was when he heard Dean that he finally figured out what was going on.

Wide eyed, he watched his brother’s stifled gasp turn into the harsh groan of pain Dean tried and failed to keep back. Sam looked frantically down at the car keys at his feet. There was usually only one reason to use a uniquely personal item like. It was a possession to cast Sam’s energy in a particular direction. Sam’s awareness hadn’t been sent floating into midair, he had been inside Dean’s head and they were still connected. Whatever that new hex did, Sam was channeling it right into his brother instead. The strange thing about the transference was that with all the whispered agony the symbol promised, Sam didn’t feel anything but its release. It was like being under the flow of turbulent water, pushing and shoving against his skin in its rushed passage.

Gordon glanced back at Dean’s writhing form. “Can you shut it off?”

“No.” Sam breathed.

Dean’s hands were in fists, his body shaking with his rapid heartbeat. Slumping back, Sam knew what it meant to have any of this abomination exposed to his brother. The thought that Dean could know even one fraction of what Sam had locked down into his core made him want to throw up.

His stare slowly went to Gordon.

Sam had directed this tapped fount of energy at him before. Why couldn’t he do it again? His mouth trembled in frustration when he knew he had no idea how he had done any of it in the first place. There was no sign of his own will when it came to feats of the unexplained. All he had managed to accomplish was visceral and unpredictable.

“Do you believe it now?" Gordon forced Dean's head up with the back of his gag and some of his hair. “You can feel it?”

Sam didn’t miss his brother’s gaze shifting over to him and then slipping back down at the salt line. Fighting to concentrate during the onslaught, Dean was looking at the circles in bewilderment. Sam didn’t like how his brother was fixed on it instead of dismissing it like he had earlier. He moved his cramped muscles and avoided the puzzled raw hurt that was starting in his brother’s eyes.

Releasing the back of his head, Gordon grabbed up Dean’s chin instead. "Let me show you another fun trick.”

Dean shook his head weakly but earnestly in strong disinterest.

“Don’t be like that. You’ll like this next one.”

The keys shook on the tiles as the next circle was bisected again and again. Dean growled angrily as it struck, gushing ruthlessly through him and cracking his head back against the bars.

In a quiet rage that Sam felt flare low and hot deep under his pooled calm, he knew what he had to do. This man would not end this experiment until it ran to its conclusion. Sam knew what would put a stop to it but he couldn’t give something he didn’t have.

“Okay,” Sam heard himself say. “You win.”

The final line being drawn stopped, the new mark uncompleted and constrained to its current limit. Dean shuddered in place, his chest hitching with the effort to keep drawing in air. His eyes blinked opened uncertainly at the unexpected respite.

The pleased look on the hunter’s face was almost enough to make Sam take it all back despite the dwindling sound of his brother’s fight to stay alive.

The man had been correct in a way. Sam had come to this town for an unpleasant purpose. But it was to chase the chaos, not to command it. Sam decided to use the truth again. It hadn’t served him very well so far but this time he thought it might.

“The mausoleum,” Sam said. “At the edge of town.”

"What’s in it?”

“The reason I came here.”

Gordon’s content smile couldn’t have been more genuine if he’d tried.

Sam let himself look back over at his brother.

The smoldering symbol hadn’t been smeared just yet. Dean was still feeling whatever brand of terrible it was casting through his skin. Despite the hectic static of damage and confusion, Dean’s faltering gaze was locked on Sam. The sight of it made Sam swiftly look down and away. There was something else there besides humiliated fury and the desperate effort to keep astride the surges of pain.

He felt his own eyes blur.

It looked a lot like fear.

 

tbc


	5. Chapter 5

Sam had long forgotten the feeling of regular blood flow to his limbs, past all pain and into a strange but tolerable numbness.

The lack of sensation had ceased to bother him, exhaustion and what was probably the onset of dehydration made the shades of ache blur and overlap. It had taken a long time to reach this fragile position of stasis. He hovered within a delicate width where he could completely stem the flow of agony his nerves received. When it seemed clear that time had come for him to finally leave his seat, he found himself not as excited as he should be. Because one thing was for sure, the road back to mobility would not be a good time.

Sam groaned when he felt the hunter's hands work quickly and efficiently behind him, knowing what would come next. The bite of the leather belt cutting into his waist was jerked free and tossed aside. He barely had time to prepare himself when he heard the sharp click of the release. His body gave way, crumbling out of the chair to leave him gasping on the floor, eyes squeezed shut. A thousand burning needles shot through his arms and legs, muscles twitching in shock at the sudden absence of their restraint. For a few endless minutes, no thought of his fate or what might come after preceded the sensation of how fucking terrible and wonderful it was to be out of that chair. He barely paid any attention as his hands were taken and the feel of metal returned. These were everyday handcuffs, the gauge made them police issue but they didn’t feel like the lead crushing weights of the clamps. For the first time in days, Sam could lift his bound hands and pushed the hair up out of his eyes.

He could hear Gordon walking around him with urgent brusqueness, the sound of him rechecking weapons and packing things into his duffel.

"Look alive, Sammy. Goin' on a little field trip."

The rush of feeling down his cramped legs flared to excruciating as soon as he attempted to stand up. He hadn’t been upright for more than a few seconds before it got so bad that his body gave out before he had a chance to agree. The burn seared up again with the jolt of his knees on the hard floor. His tethered hands came out in front of him to keep from falling full out on his face. Palms landing on the ground, he accidentally ruined the salt circle with his efforts to stay vertical. The sharp granules stuck to his skin as he quickly lifted his shaking hands away. A flash of deep seated dread surfaced at the sight of a line broken by mistake.

Gordon watched him attentively but with no great amount of concern. It didn’t seem to be much of a surprise that the salt hadn’t kept him locked tight inside its borders.

Fighting the dissent of his limbs, he pushed himself up a little to look for Dean. His brother's breathing rose and fell in a shallow harsh pattern that indicated awareness though his chin was down against his chest. The sleeves of his flannel were dark and stiff with blood. The rain was coming in with small gusts of the storm, the water wetting his hair and soaking his shoulders. Shivering uncontrollably, his skin was a shade too close to the anemic wash of the gray sky. Sam knew better to think it was because of the cold. The trembling had set in well before the rain started to dot the floor. The shaking had spread and settled over his brother’s body as soon as Gordon had shut the last symbol down with a brush of a hand.

"Dean?" Sam croaked.

Dean's shoulders tensed at the sound of his name, the ropes which bound him rigid to the window frame creaking slightly as he strained. He reluctantly raised his head, meeting Sam’s eyes vacantly. Sam didn’t like that look. Not now. Not when things were happening and there was a window of chance rapidly approaching. The less they were restrained the better their odds became. But that span of opportunity could vanish as quickly as it arrived.

Gritting his teeth, Sam tested his arms, trying to lift his weight up off the dirty floor. His bones were as weak and insubstantial as water. Distracted by his own efforts, he winced when Gordon's grip wrenched him up firmly and quickly by the bicep. The abrupt process made him bite back on a sharp gasp, hands flattening against the wall he found himself propped mercifully against. His legs weren’t feeling all that useful, But realized they were taking his weight. Testing his muscles slowly, Sam listened as Gordon finished packing the last of his equipment. Gordon walked into the middle of the room, and gave everything a final once-over before heading out.

"Almost forgot."

Like an afterthought, Gordon turned to approach the window. Sam saw his brother's body stiffen as the man leaned down unbearably close. It was a simple thing to see that this hunter enjoyed subduing someone as dangerous as his brother. Gordon's entire stance assumed something like pride whenever he got near him. His hand came up and went firmly over Dean’s already muffled mouth. At first Sam frowned in confusion, wondering just how he’d stop the man from performing some horrible manual suffocation that would end his brother right here and now. But then he heard the soft, stifled sounds of protest rise from Dean as Gordon leaned even closer. Instead of pinching his nose shut too, Gordon instead briefly pressed his lips onto the back of his own knuckles. The touch was almost sympathetic, made carefully and deliberately over his brother's smothered mouth. Dean froze under the strangely gentle gesture, his chest heaving uncertainly.

"Just a kiss goodnight."

A brutal backwards whip of his arm sent Dean’s chin up hard into the bars. It had been precisely placed to put him out cold, leaving nothing but a fine line of blood running from his lip. Sam watched weakly as the nylon twine was slashed and severed with a box cutter. Gordon did one hand at a time, saving the brunt of the limp weight until he was in the right position to heave Dean up off the window. Sam willed his legs to obey the command to stand as he watched his brother settle like a dead body across Gordon’s shoulders.

"You first, Sammy," he motioned towards the door with his pistol. "Let's go."

Sam stared at him before he decided to begin the stagger out into the hallway. With one backward glance he took a look at the chair that had been his prison. The circles of chalk and salt lay marred around its circumference. As he suspected there hadn’t been any other way out at his back. It was just another wall with an uneven metal rack of a bookcase. But directly behind the large wooden seat was another circle that had been drawn on the wall’s scorched plaster. Like the salt, it hadn’t done much good besides brightening up the place. With a small smile, he had sort of wondered if he was going to see the sight of that particular ward anytime during his stay. Sam was even a little flattered at the trouble that had gone into the detail. His smile faltered as he turned away from the powder chalk drawing and he began the slow move towards the stairs. He realized his brother had had a perfect view of that thing for a real long time. Dean had probably been looking at it since his arrival and giving a lot of thought as to why the hell it was there. After everything that had happened, Sam wouldn’t have blamed him.

The devil’s trap was a hard one to ignore.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There were many ways in which this entire thing could get worse.

The unseen sun was already beginning to set behind the clouds. Judging by the names on the signs as they sped by and the selected remoteness of the gutted factory, it would be well past nightfall by the time they reached their destination. Sam shifted uncomfortably in the too familiar space of a passenger seat. Gordon's four door sedan was ingeniously non-specific, the seating stiff and awkward for Sam's sore frame. His cuffed hands had been laced through the snug fitting seatbelt, the loaded pistol resting comfortably in Gordon’s lap. The conversation was kept short and the radio off, dark eyes fixed and intent on the road. Sam willed Dean to wake up while the trip lasted. He envisioned the trailing ends of the cords on his wrists hooking around Gordon’s throat. He didn’t even care if it sent them all crashing into the guard rail, spinning and rending steel until it all came to a shuddering halt...

But Gordon knew better than to take weakness for granted in either of his captives. Although Dean hadn’t moved when he had been arranged in the backseat, Gordon had made sure to refasten his hands in the same kind of manacles Sam had been provided.

Sam was grateful for the white noise of the cars rushing by on the highway. It cleared his head.

Gordon had questioned him further about the job. Sam carefully picked a few phrases out of his memory of necromancy to make it all sound like perfect sense. He’d been mindful to withhold enough detail to make it all appear legit. With the added numerology of the town’s latitude and longitude, the hunter was obviously completely convinced this was what he had waited so patiently for. Although, it disturbed Sam slightly to find an easy plausibly in dictating the Devil’s work.

“There have always been people out to bring back the dead,” Gordon shook his head. “It comes up over and over again in the bible. Got so bad there was even a warning made to the Israelites. Imagine that? Nothing like the good old days.”

With the unhindered circulation of blood, Sam found his thoughts processing more easily. Not that he'd needed to fabricate. The Big Bad out there in the mausoleum at the edge of town hadn't been a lie. There was something out there in that sprawling standing graveyard that any side of the war would want for their benefit. Sam hadn’t actually ever considered the thing’s use before he had started manufacturing the story. He had never been taught to sway the things they hunted, just bring rest or oblivion.

“The word of God didn’t stop everybody though,” Gordon continued. “It says right there in the Book of Deuteronomy that King Saul had his witch go ahead and give it a shot anyway."

Dean stirred behind them, tossing his head once and then twice before the rattle of metal proved he was awake. Sam suddenly wished that gag wasn’t there to censor any of his brother’s thoughts no matter what they might happen to be. That mouth was about as good for distraction as it was at self infliction.

“They invoked the shade of Samuel,” Gordon looked over at Sam with a smile. “And you know what that ghost told Saul?”

Sam knew that legend as well as any bedtime fable. As a kid he had had the childish attraction to any story that included someone with his own name. But as the years passed the figures on the old pages took a more solemn shape in his professional lexicon. Samuel’s spirit had been summoned long enough to stand on the palace stone and push forward air from rotted lungs. It had been enough to whisper in the ear of the doomed ruler of the holy land. But it wasn’t divine insight that came from the flip side. The type of knowledge the shade had imparted was why the hunter behind the wheel was so amused with the retelling.

That ghost had uttered something most men never wanted to hear. While the king eagerly expected to receive the grace of heaven, he instead had been told exactly where and how he would die.

“Don’t worry,” Gordon’s voice had a quiet assurance even though Sam had been silent. "Almost there."

 

 

 

 

 

It was very old and a lot larger than he’d suspected.

Listening to the tires grind across the massive parking lot, Sam watched the building loom in the dismal twilight. As the car traversed the asphalt, another wing of the structure appeared behind the tangle of woods and redoubled its possible size. Mausolea came in all proportions and shapes. The mammoth stone buildings were no different from a cemetery, housing hundreds and hundreds of bodies up and down the inside of the bare corridors. In place of headstones there were small plaques with surnames and the hyphenated years. Instead of neatly clipped grass that took you from grave to grave, there was a polished marble floor. There was no broad blue sky overhead but a towering ceiling that allowed maximum capacity of remains to stack up to six coffins high.

The brick foundations of the vault might have looked their age but the locks definitely didn't.

Tampering with the dead was still very much a pastime, even outside their singular profession. The security was advanced and computerized but even that gave Gordon little trouble. In five minutes he had the circuits fried, the code cracked and it didn't take more than a good hard shove with a crow bar to do away with the peripherals. When they moved inside, Gordon paused to study its immediate layout. Pretending to do the same, Sam felt a renewed sense of calm knowing he’d already had an advantage over the man. He had spent his weeks in the nearby town studying blue prints. Construction permits. City inspection notices. Nevertheless, nothing was ever quite the same as it was on paper.

For all his time spent with what the waking world kept far away, Sam couldn't suppress the uncomfortable thought at the sheer volume of the place. It was a weird tinge of claustrophobia that came when too much unlit space was trapped between too many walls. The vast stretch before them held nothing but cast pools of dim light spread intermittently down the long corridor. There was the odor of the undisturbed, the still hanging air and the settled dust. Sam took in the height of the cavernous ceiling, measuring the width of how the coffins were tidily stacked on top of the other. Each occupied spot was catalogued and categorized in etched brass or granite.

Gordon set the barrel of his gun level with the base of Dean’s spine and indicated at Sam to start walking. Exchanging a look with his brother before he moved, he hoped to see something there he’d recognize. They weren’t armed but they both had some mobility now. If they moved at the same time something could be accomplished before a bullet met a mark. But all he got was a return of his stare. As Dean worked the leather strip wedged between his teeth, Sam caught a nervous clench in his brother’s bruised jaw. It didn’t match the look in his eyes. It should have been anger but it looked more like wary caution. And it wasn’t turned on white hot like the situation required. His brother was half lost in a fog of bewilderment and the lingering haze of a pain.

Taking a deep breath, Sam headed in the direction he had been shown. He considered just starting to talk out loud despite what Gordon might do. Explain that he wasn’t anything that this man said he was. Show his brother that nothing had changed no matter what those wards had forced out of him.

Hunching his shoulders, Sam had to remind himself where the hunter’s pistol was. It was the only thing keeping him from swinging around with double fists and taking his chances using a body that barely wanted to take a walk.

The endless hall turned on a complete right angle, leading to another long stretch of heavy silence. A macabre demand for space allowed for additions, newer sections with cleaner floors and more elaborate engravings on the markers. Sam directed his mind back to the large sheets of paper that outlined every door and vent. He remembered this addition only being less than a decade old. The stolen building draft of the mausoleum sat in Sam’s mind as though it were laid out in front of him. The double oak doors were one of the structure’s few closed off rooms.

Even though they were a long way from the town steeple, what lay beyond was hallowed ground.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most cultures, it seemed, felt the need to enclose their remains under the care of a guardian of some kind.

Where there were bones, God or some imitation was never far away. The chapel adjoining the vault was little more than an unimpressive holding space with a solitary stained glass window and a plain wood stoup of holy water. Dark red candles sat sputtering in their brass holders, waiting to receive prayers in the gloom.

The inside of the place was stale and warm, the smell of old wax and smoke heavy in the air. The small room’s existence seemed meant only for the random visitor to leave their whisperings with the fixed crucifix before departing for the sunlight. It felt cramped and low after the broad wide echo of the barren halls. Despite its intention to comfort and console, it did not feel like a room anyone would linger in for very long.

Dean was swaying on his feet when Gordon pushed them both down on their knees before the modest altar.

"Sit a spell." Gordon said.

Neither of them argued though Sam saw Dean's instincts override his hesitancy, the intensity of his glare making up for his enforced silence.

"I won't be gone long," Gordon explained. "But I gotta make sure you boys stay put."

Leaning over and clutching his stomach, Sam fought back the burn starting up and down his frame. Once he had hit the floor, his new found legs had instantly started to cramp with waiting muscle tremors. He felt a cold sweat break out over his skin when he saw Gordon produce the chalk again.

"Go on," Gordon offered it to Dean. "Take it."

"Y-you really think that’s even going to work in here?" Sam rasped.

Gordon cocked the gun, pressing the tip against Dean's forehead.

"No time to argue semantics."

Shakily, Dean shifted on his knees, swaying slightly to the side when his balance swung momentarily out of his control. Sam watched him raise his hands up slowly, his knees sliding further apart for an even lower center of gravity. Although Gordon was right in front of them, Dean’s hands were strangely misplaced off to the side. Sam blinked, realizing that the off set in his brother’s eyes might have a lot to do with some loss of vision. Watching Dean focus up vaguely to the left of where Gordon actually was, he knew his brother was in worse shape than what he could read. Gordon placed the chalk in Dean’s open palm and then squeezed his fingers closed around it.

"It don't have to be perfect."

Dean performed the task the easiest way he could, by pulling the chalk around himself. By the time he got the ends to meet, Sam was glad the hunter with the gun wasn’t worried about exactness. All that really mattered was that it was sealed.

Job done, his brother dropped the chalk and absently smeared a streak of pink on the thigh of his jeans.

Without comment, Gordon’s boot came up and sent Dean careening backwards. The force of it sent him sliding across the smooth floor and crashing into of one of the pews. A grip hooked into Sam’s cuffs and dragged him into the circle that had been made. Before he could react, a solid downward motion with the handle of the gun made stars burst before his eyes. Dizzy and disoriented, he pressed his clammy hands down on the cold stone under him. Before his sight cleared he heard the chalk scrape in a rapid succession of marks.

Sam focused just in time to witness the oval’s shape before another was added next to it. The oval had been the very first of all the marks Gordon had experimented with. However, it wasn’t fed to him gradually this time. No, this go around was all business and with none of the watchful curiosity for his insightful reactions. With no build up between ecstasy and horrifying, Sam jerked violently, his back arching as it sprung up through him like a torch set to flame.

“Looks like it works just fine.” Gordon observed.

He felt his lungs seize and spasm with the intensity of it, his mind frantic with the comprehension of possibly being left this way for more than a few seconds. Wheezing in a breath of air he felt it start to ease off as Gordon decreased the symbols value. Sam didn’t know why the man did it, but at the moment he didn’t have time to ponder the unexpected act of mercy. The sharp ringing in his ears quieted to a dull pitch but a steady terrible pull remained. Its phantom hold kept him stiffly upright on his knees like a hand was tipping up his chin. Struggling to move, Sam realized that that damn chair hadn’t been the only thing keeping him in check during their previous sessions. The chalk had been doing its part too.

Gordon leaned down and lifted Dean up by the elbow. Pulling him out from under the pew, Gordon pushed him towards the narrow steep steps that led to the pulpit. Someone had had provided a podium up there for those not of the cloth to speak from. It looked tacked on compared to the austere simple assembly of the small church. It was a place to clutch while a eulogy was read, or a simple vantage for the staff to recite the obituary of a stranger. Whatever it was, it was solidly fastened to the adjoining wall. His brother had roused enough that Gordon swiftly shifted his weight to kneel with one knee down on Dean’s chest.

Unlocking one of Dean’s hands, Gordon proficiently slipped the ring around the solid leg of the platform’s heavy oak base. With a short pause of consideration, Gordon flicked out a butterfly knife from his back pocket and slit the gag off with one quick motion. Dean didn’t say anything when it was pulled free. Sprawled on the raised steps, he rolled his head and worked his jaw painfully. Tasks completed, Gordon stepped away and stowed his firearm.

“If the name you gave me isn’t here?” Gordon glanced over in Dean’s direction. “I’ll make you burn him inside out like a flare.”

Sam twisted his body so he could watch the man shoulder the bag of equipment that had been brought along. The name Sam had graciously provided of the recently deceased was correct. Gordon didn’t have to worry about that at all. All he had to do was find it out there in the maze of corpses that lay waiting in the walls. For some reason, the fine keen of Gordon’s impatience made Sam think of that old King in his palace, waiting for the dead to rise so he could listen to all the secrets he believed he was due.

The man walked quickly down through the short aisle of varnished benches and didn’t spare either of them a second look before pushing through the double hinged doors. His footsteps echoed briefly before disappearing right along with him. They were alone.

Looking down desperately at the scrawled lines that kept him in thrall, Sam hovered in and out over the edges of pain.

"So...”

Sam had wondered why Gordon had removed the gag from his brother’s mouth. But looking over at Dean, he now suddenly got the reason Gordon might think some quality alone time might be a great idea. Halfheartedly lifting a wrist to test his secure attachment to the floor, Dean refocused his blurred attention in Sam’s general direction. Sam was a little happy his brother couldn’t quite see everything in the dim waver of candle light. Especially when he was fairly sure what was coming next.

“Anything y-you wanna tell me, Sammy?”


	6. Chapter 6

“Dean, can-can you lift that thing?”

Sam tried to use his family's talent for pushing what could wait in lieu of more dire and immediate things. Simpler things, things a guy could wrap his mind around. Like dislodging himself from a heavy podium of brass and wood. His brother pulled at the cuff link impatiently, the sound of metal grating against metal accompanying his muttered curse.

But unfortunately, Dean kept to the matter on his mind.

“There anything you want to discuss?” he ventured irritably. “Anything you want to get off your chest maybe?”

With all the noise roiling through Sam's head, tactical diversion was the last thing he wanted to concentrate on at the moment. But one look at the expression on his brother's face did the trick. Without thinking much more about it another perfectly reasonable follow up came right on out.

"W-What's with your eyes?"

Sam had been doing it since he had been old enough to talk. The art of dodging a nonspecific request was something you learned quick if there were a long list of rules that you weren’t real interested in following. The redirection of the topic did exactly what he had hoped. It involved two things that always crossed his brother’s wires long enough for Sam to figure out what to say next. Pointing out Dean’s poorly hidden injuries was one of them. Secondly, daring to suggest that he had in any way been forced to yield to them never failed to produce a flustered silence.

“It’s getting better,” Dean said. “I can almost see all the way over there.”

While Sam was trying to figure out what exactly the hell that meant, Dean stretched his free arm out and shook it a few times. There was a glint of light as something slipped out and fell into his hand. Sam tried to make out what the object was in the meager gleam of the candles. It was the metal tab ring off the top of a soda can. He watched his brother put it on its side under his boot and crush it into half. With a few twists it quickly snapped into two small hooked pieces.

“Where’d you get that?”

“Outside.” Dean murmured, distracted by the dynamics of the minuscule tool.

The few minutes they’d spent waiting on Gordon disabling the security, Sam hadn’t thought to take the opportunity to look around at what might have been on the ground.

The lock’s trick solved, the cuff fell off in no time flat. Righting himself off the awkward sprawl on the stairs, his brother lumbered to a shaky stand. He stepped towards Sam but halted outside the poorly drawn circle. After about a full second of indecision he experimentally waved his hand through the air over Sam’s head.

Seeing some end in sight to the suspended misery, Sam involuntarily let the sensations he’d been beating back flood forward into total focus. The desperate pained sound he let out caused his brother to look down at him sharply.

“What is it?” Dean asked. "What's happening?"

He realized all Dean could see was a person kneeling inexplicably in one place. Dean searched the circle and knelt down before he could find the marks.

“Is it these things?”

Finding it hard to speak, Sam nodded unsteadily at what lay scrawled on the marble. Dean quickly wiped his hand across it, obliterating the design and the ones that sat next to it. Sam gasped when the crush around his chest was released and the hectic buzzing through his brain died off like someone had jerked the dial on the volume. His brother’s hands had his, the tiny bend of metal sliding into the small locks of his binds. Leaning forward to give Dean better access, he felt a jolting mild charge like electricity. Pushing himself forward again, he struck it a second time. His hands wouldn’t pass over the circle edge. Glancing up at Dean, he saw his brother was too intent on his work to notice. Sam quickly scanned around the uneven circumference.

“There’s-there’s one more.” Sam spotted the last one set off at his side. He recalled seeing something like it before on the tiles of his prior prison. He had had no idea what it did besides fine tune his senses but it also seemed to act a lot like the salt line should have. “Over there.”

Dean looked over at it slowly, his hands pulling away the restraints on Sam’s wrists.

“It still hurts?”

“What?” Sam swallowed, unwilling to say what that symbol was able to do. “No, it-- just get rid of it—“

“You can’t get out of there can you.”

“Dean, listen, I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t—“

“Stop.”

His brother was looking at him hard and gnawing at the inside of his lip. It was a thinly veiled gesture of anxiety that Sam knew very well. But he didn't know what to say to make it go away.

He couldn’t even begin to try to explain that he didn’t know what these marks meant. But Dean was watching him closely. His eyes traveled back and forth over Sam’s face looking for the real reason these wards would have any power to affect a man. Dean wasn’t stupid. Everything they’d been taught had told them that these kinds of symbols couldn’t influence a human being. Not a complete and total human being anyway.

Sam sagged down back on his heels, staring back at his brother in frustration.

He knew that lag in logic was stuck in a relentless loop through his brother’s mind. Along with that devil’s trap and every word out of Gordon’s mouth. It was more than difficult to believe that Sam didn’t have a notion of what was going on here, it was just about impossible. But Dean was working on some faith. Sam saw that the tenuous strand might be the only thing left between his brother and all the hunters that would want him as dead as Gordon did.

“We’re going to figure this out,” Dean told him. “Okay?”

Sam felt himself nodding, a deep resounding relief at feeling a hand on his shoulder squeeze hard enough to hurt. His brother was still here. He wasn’t pushed back far away enough by this collection of bottomless secrets to want to keep running. Dean had used the word like it was nothing but he’d included himself in the problem without even a second thought.

“But first things first.”

Dean stood up and looked around.

“W-What?” Sam blinked in confusion as he stepped away.

“So, this job, the thing we’ve been bustin’ ass on all year,” Dean began in exasperation. “You had to send him right for it? Not that am arguing with ya, but does even Gordon deserve that?”

“Does it matter?” Sam honestly asked.

“Whether the bastard does or not that thing is gonna get out,” Dean said shortly. “I better make sure he doesn't fuck it all up.”

“Dean, please, let me out of here, I’ll go with you—“

“You're staying in this room,” Dean’s gaze flickered up and off the chalk line like he was trying to avoid its existence. “It's about as safe as you can get once Gordon starts messing with that crypt.”

There was a reason they had both kept their distance from this mausoleum for so long. In fact, Sam was doing his best not to think about where he had sent Gordon. Without much of a warning as to what exactly was sitting on the other side of the fancy embossed plaque, the man was going to find a lot of trouble fairly fast. The hunter was expecting something pretty bad but he wasn’t expecting what Sam had been studying intently for weeks from a specially warded motel room.

But Dean wasn’t only thinking about the sanctity of the small chapel. His concern had little to do with his brother being neatly stashed under a protective crucifix and a jumbo sized bible. Sam’s jaw tightened as he understood what was really going on here. Dean wasn’t ready to forget that invisible surge of pain that Sam had inflicted. He abruptly knew what it was that had been missing in his brother’s eyes ever since Gordon had wound Sam’s will up in a fist. Dean’s absolute trust in him was gone.

“Dean, I didn’t want to do that,” Sam fought not to let the burn starting in his eyes turn into anything else. “Gordon made me do that to you.”

“I know.”

For some reason the belief in his brother’s voice didn’t make him feel any better. Sam let his head bob down to his chest. He was so tired. All he wanted was to get to the car and drive out of here. Pushing away his exhaustion, he knew his only option at the moment was to observe his brother's search for anything in the church that wasn't nailed down. There wasn't much. Pinching out the flame on a fat burgundy candle, Dean knocked it off the stand it sat on. Hefting the sturdy coiled bar of the iron holder, he spun the four points of its base before swinging it for easy portage over one shoulder.

“He has a gun, Dean,” Sam said. “A few hundred guns probably—“

Dean suddenly interrupted him. Not with any kind of retort but by tripping and nearly falling flat on his face. Swearing to himself, his brother looked backwards accusingly at the unyielding pew he’d sideswiped on his way to the door. So much for his eyesight coming back in 20/20.

Sam's anger swiftly overcame his shame.

“I-I’ve been putting together notes on the catacomb for four weeks!” he stuttered. “You haven’t even looked at any of it! You can’t even see where the hell you’re going—“

Sam stared in disbelief at the double doors as they swung closed for a second time that evening.

“Dean?”

Looking down at his completely free hands, he turned to the flimsy chalk that kept him in place more efficiently than poured concrete and barbed wire. Unable to even get to his feet, he strained forward as far as the barrier would allow and furiously pressed his hands up against the stinging boil of static.

“Dean!”

What the hell was Dean going to do? Hope to bash Gordon’s head in while he was looking in the wrong direction? This was fucking ludicrous. It was insane.

“Dean!!”

An unexpected rumbling sound caused Sam to draw back in alarm.

For a moment he thought about the thing Gordon could be unchaining somewhere in the labyrinth of the building. But he quickly realized that the dull boom had radiated from his immediate vicinity. The standing wooden pews all creaked and loudly clacked back onto the floor, rocking slightly with the shove they had been given. The room darkened and then resumed its dim glow as the ripple traveled over the flickering flames in the glass votives. Looking around in bewilderment, Sam watched the last unanchored thing in the room slowly tip back and forth until it firmly returned back onto its stone base. It was the intricately carved receptacle for holy water.

His wonder was disrupted.

With a groan, he felt the trickle of pain leak slowly into the space behind his eyes. With the oily sweat breaking out on his skin, the price of power began to explode quietly in his skull. Clutching his head, he braced himself for the compounded agony that would surely follow. Crouched down low he waited for his stomach to flip, bile to burn and his brain to start ripping into pieces until the mercy of a black out. For a few interminable seconds it seemed like he’d get that and more. But the clamor gradually faded back into silence.

Nothing else happened.

“What the..."

Sam’s gaze fell on that mark that had magnified his sight and hearing. Looked like that one was another mystery solved. Apparently that little simple drawing had also been responsible for some bursts of energy that Sam couldn’t quite control. The last one in the warehouse hadn’t done much but softly nudge Gordon while the man had been going through his brother’s pockets. He stared down at the few drops of water from the cistern’s basin that had sloshed unevenly onto the floor. This demonstration was a little bit more exciting than the last one though.

Breathing harder, he wasn’t sure why he wasn’t paying for it as hard as he had the last time. Looking up reluctantly to the silent hanging figure on the cross above, he let out a determined sigh. Whatever the hell Sam happened to be, maybe it helped to have a soul. Perhaps it helped even more to be on consecrated ground where that kind ownership was smiled upon. The thought brought Sam’s attention back to the cistern of holy water in front of him. Sitting back up on his knees, he looked at the elaborate reservoir decisively.

He looked at it some more.

Image by image. Frame by frame. He clearly visualized what he wanted.

There was a flawless moving picture in his mind.

But the thing sat perfectly still no matter how hard he glared at it. He slumped back down and let his hands rub his stinging eyes. Angrily, his gaze flashed back over to the double doors that both men had left by. If either his brother or the hunter that brought him here wanted true rage or fear, there wasn’t any need for Sam to fake his way through a single moment of it at this point. His memory shifted through his hours of confinement. The first sight of those bizarre recordings of himself projected up against that wall. The endless questions that he couldn’t answer. His brother made to bleed right in front of him while Gordon made sure to stand aside so he wouldn’t miss a thing. The sure look in Gordon’s eyes every time he decided to pick another one of those damn marks out of his book. Dean leaving him here. Dean not listening to him. Just walking out that door without even—

Sam swung his head up at the sudden sound.

With a crash the stone column made heavy impact with the ground. Sam jerked back in surprise when the contents splashed out into his face, shocking him in a wash of cold. Gasping, he blinked at the stoup rolling to a gentle halt on its side. The water was all over the floor, the growing black pool creeping closer. Breathless, Sam followed it as it traveled the irregular surfaces of the stone and seep to the edge of the imperfect circle that had been sealed around him.

It was humbling to wait for it. The delicate scrape of powder needed only be broken by something else just as fragile. With a trembling hand, he tested the circle edge, his wet fingertips streaking the pink pigment across the white marble. Finally completely unfettered, Sam slowly stood up. Freely flexing all the muscles in his body for the first time in days, he stepped out in front of the altar.

The giant open bible had a rosary hanging in its binding as some kind of bookmark. Sam had been staring at it off and on since they had arrived. Glancing at the page, he had to narrow his eyes at the small print and the low light. However, the page had been left with an index card under the last line someone had been here to read.

Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

Sam shut the book closed and slid the beads from between the thin brittle pages.

Wrapping the length of it around his wrist he walked down through the aisle, every pew tossed into an odd angle of varying degrees from where he had knelt at the epicenter. Closing a fist around the small cross that hung into his palm, he knew the symbols on the floor were lost but he felt his body hum to the core even without them. Pushing the doors open he thought about what the good book had suggested and decided to have some faith like Dean. Some things were out of your hands no matter how much you’d like them to be. But he didn’t have far to go to find out how much of a part he’d have to play. God’s wrath was waiting all locked up in a coffin one floor down.

Sam figured He might just need someone to pull it wide open.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even though there was more than a head start, Sam was reasonably sure he’d be the first one to arrive.

He and his brother might have been in the vicinity of the mausoleum within the last month but they had been getting ready for it long before that. For no particular reason outside of dumb luck, Sam had never mentioned to Dean which burial chamber the body had been put in. There seemed to be plenty of time later for those kinds of secondary details that had little to do with the mechanics of the final execution. That left the reasonable assumption that the other two men were searching for the crypt in question somewhere among the many stretches of corridor.

Selling Gordon a story had seemed like a great idea at the time.

He had at first thought about it much like leading an unwary man to a cliff edge and not shouting when the next step would be his last. However, he knew a man like Gordon would take as many precautions as probably they would when approaching such a large unknown. But Sam wasn’t really concerned with Gordon Walker stumbling over his Latin when he’d need it the most.

He was more troubled about Dean.

His brother’s complete lack of education on the actual job that lay under Gordon’s ordained mission was what made him move faster than he should have. The basement door opened quietly, the fall of cement steps leading down in a dark so deep Sam wished there was something other than his hands to use to feel for the next turn. He bet neither one of the hunters that were wandering the same gloom would think to go down to the catacombs first. Why would they? The basement of a standing basement was for the old stuff. At the bottom of the stairs were all the cheap seats. These walls were allocated for the unclaimed John Does and the penniless nuns that were assured a plot with their contracts. No one with a few bucks would end up stashed away down here.

Not unless someone had specifically requested it.

Sam passed under the dim glow of a red ‘exit’ sign that directed him towards the next set of ascending steps. He moved past those, going on memory alone how the turns and corners would get him where he needed to be. It was easier to ignore his faltering body as he concentrated on lefts and rights. It was simple to deny the aching need to sit for a few moments until the shuddering muscles in his legs quieted. There was something down here and it wasn’t going to stay sleeping for very much longer.

People who were dangerous in life had the potential to be as lethal in death. This particular corpse had passed a century unnoticed in a small town like a poisonous viper hidden in the leaves. That was until a bad case of mortality and a steady decline eventually brought the end everyone must face. But this was the type of being that would make arrangements for their own resurrection. From what little was known of the deeds done while still in the mortal coil, Sam wasn’t real interested in seeing what might come next. A configuration of the chemically drained remains and a dislodged wicked psyche was slowly assembling itself within these walls.

Gordon thought the body was just a ripe soul that Hell wanted to get a hold of first. Snatch it away before it faded into some magical forgiving brilliance of Heaven and shove it into its own pocket to use as a tool. That was what Sam had let him believe anyway.

The door didn’t look like it had anything alarming on the other side of it.

It appeared as any other entrance to any other boiler room he’d ever seen. It opened like one too, whining on its hinges with enough noise to make Sam check his back. But the shadows were as still as the musty cellar air. The room beyond was in pitch blackness. Knowing he couldn’t do much without being able to see, he was in a way glad that they hadn’t had time to prepare everything that needed to be done to complete this job.

Sam walked forward blindly with his arms outstretched. He knew what this room looked like on a flat map. Its dimensions were memorized by feet and yards, the height by inches. The plan hadn’t indicated one but some of the even older rooms in the building had had single bare bulbs installed at their centers. In two more large steps he’d feel the string attached to its switch brush against his face. The rosary tapped against his wrist as he moved across the dank floor, reminding him that it was all he’d come armed with.

There was some incredibly simple methods one could apply to stop some of the most catastrophic things from happening.

Like patching a small insignificant leak on the face of a mile high dam, the merest token could be the most important. One uncomplicated act could save the entire thing from breaking loose and unleashing whatever it kept trapped down on the unsuspecting in its path. After days and days of meticulously speculating how to annihilate this malevolence, he was now only going to put a small lock on its door. A small unbreakable chain that would allow them time to come back when they had all the right tools for the job.

The thin cord felt as insubstantial as a cobweb in his grip. With one easy tug, the dusty bulb overhead sputtered to life.

The freshly installed bronze plaque was directly ahead of him. It was sitting all by itself exactly where he knew it would be on newly painted plaster that covered the encased sealed sarcophagus within. There were dozens more on his sides of the long narrow space, the dates running back to the buildings creation over fifty years prior. But it was quiet. The concrete floor wasn’t split in pieces. The walls weren’t bulging and heaving like lungs, laborious with the sluggish body attempting to reemerge. They weren’t too late. He still had plenty of time to place the ivory rosary beads over the tomb marker and then leave.

Sam froze in place.

Down on the floor in front of the crypt, there was something that didn’t belong there. Not daring to get any closer, he nervously swallowed and hesitantly scanned the floor where it met the wall. In no time at all he found six more like it before he’d even gotten half way around the room. The other side was the same. They were new marks, all in an array of bright and cheerful pastels like kids chalk scratched all over a sidewalk.

Gordon had been here already.

Not only had the hunter already come and gone, he'd rigged the place to catch and incinerate anything that came out of that wall. Something that might even be a little bit human.

Sam realized he was shaking. Stumbling to the side he felt himself catch on a familiar hot jolt of a barrier. Looking up he saw the other half of the hunter’s work. It was a network of circles, small ones the size of his hand that grew progressively into larger and larger spheres. They fit one inside the other, radiating out until they became oval to fill the oblong length of the ceiling. Stepping backwards he hit another unseen edge. Staggering to the side he struck up against another. Knowing that the stacked circles were jostling him into a smaller and smaller space, he felt his panic override all his maintained calm. It was right about then that he started to feel the terrible pull of the wards hooking into him from every direction.

It was too much and all at once. The little oval with its horrific injection of elation was a simple discomfort compared to the blistering onslaught. His hands twitched with spluttering energy, his body stiffening as unseen bolts of it arced up and down his spine. His vision rapidly sharpened into a clarity that pierced through his skull like long needles. Crying out, he clasped his hands over his ears as all sound went chaotically haywire. The very breath rushing into his chest was deafening, his boots on the ground were like the sickening scrape of glass against glass. It was filling him up, thundering down into him like a waterfall. He couldn’t keep it all in, the saturation was starting to ignite him from the inside out, he was going to—

“Sam?”

He swung around at the horrible noise of his name.

“D-Don’t come in here,” Sam breathed. “Please.”

Dean had paused in the doorway, his vantage point with the bulb turned on allowing him to see all the markings that had been hidden to Sam in the complete dark. It had taken him some time, but his brother had figured out that what he was looking for wasn’t going to be found anywhere upstairs. The big wide basement with one single light shining on probably helped narrow the search. Dean warily put down the iron weapon he had been holding. Not dropping the locked gaze he had on Sam for a moment, he stepped forward slowly with both his hands raised as if that would somehow help.

“Settle down, Sammy,” Dean carefully ordered. “It’s these inscriptions. Just got to get rid of ‘em and you’ll be—“

“Stay-Stay away from me!”

Sam could see his words leave his mouth, the undulation of them traveling the air like heat wavering up through a mirage. For some reason he tried to reach out in an effort to stop it. Holding his hand out helplessly, he watched as it made contact with Dean’s chest, moving him violently back two steps and pinning him to the wall. If he had been standing in the doorway he would have been flung further. Probably another ten feet into some cinder blocks. Sam looked frantically at the mass of symbols that were surrounding him on every side. He couldn’t get near them. He couldn’t move out from under the concentric pattern that hung above him. His brother couldn’t get free either. Sam watched him struggle and gain a few inches, only to be slammed back brutally into place.

“Dean...” Sam crumbled down to his knees, the power crashing down on top of him like waves from every side. “I-I can’t breathe...”

Faintly, he heard the crack of splintered stone and metal. Holding up his head, he turned to see the engraved plaque in two solid halves on the floor. A fissure ran sideways through the wall’s middle, like someone had put an enormous fist up against the other side.

All the racket had woken someone up.

As Sam collapsed down onto the damp cement, the light bulb above him flared bright and then fizzled out. The spark of it exploding illuminated the room for one brief dizzying moment before it plunged back into blackness. The fall of hot glass fell down gently against his face. He could hear his brother calling his name. More importantly he could hear that wall giving way to the hideous obscenity that lay inside. Sam hoped for once, that Gordon was right.

He prayed those wards did every trick the hunter believed they could.

Maybe even a few he didn’t.

tbc


	7. Chapter 7

Sam had been taught when and where to put up a fight.

If you found yourself lost in the woods you just stopped walking. Sit right down and fight the fear of all that quiet standing tall for every mile around you. Even through those empty woods and all its sounds at night, someone would come to find you if you didn’t go wandering. If you were struggling in a cold deep current and you felt a hand come down, you didn’t resist it. Make your body go slack so you don’t drown the person trying to pull you towards air. There were quite a few instances where Sam’s father had warned him that passivity would save his life. Like any good training he could almost hear his old man whispering in his ear to lay still, to stop feeding the fire that doubled and overlapped in on itself every time he lashed back in its grip.

Try as he might to obey, he couldn’t do it.

The instincts to rebel against the forces eagerly smothering his life were too powerful. Sam raged against the tight wind of circles that squeezed down over him like a snake slowly constricting its muscles. The blustering sear of noise flowing into him was unleashing whatever it found inside, the rush of it gushing harder when he tried to seize it weakly with trembling hands. The knowledge that his command over it was so far from physicality made him sink back down on the damp cement. No strength he knew could stop this. All words and weapons were far out of his reach.

It seemed like a glow should have been following the sizzling lines that sliced over his skin. He could feel them remaking the scrawled patterns from the floor, turning and curving on his chest, his back and the palms of his hands. As soon as the symbol completed on his flesh it would disassemble just as rapidly, running back into a molten line to reform somewhere else on his body. But there were no sparks, no sickly illlumated flourishes of light, only his own ragged breathing booming in his head like he was being held submerged. There was nothing but the pain spiraling so far beyond his control that he could only wait for it to become so excruciating that somehow his mind would mercifully wink out. But he could still hear something besides his end.

It sounded like the whole building was coming down.

A barrage of stale air struck him as the floor was pounded with steady impacts. The heavy load of the wall gave way in the pitch black, the plaster hissing as it crumbled. The heavy cinder blocks came slamming down in sections, each strike sending a cloud of debris across the floor. Sam heard his breathing turn to a wheeze as he choked on the thick dust.

Sensing the incoming speed of sudden movement, Sam grimly waited for its arrival. But instead of feeling its brunt, it stemmed around him. Holding up his hands, he felt the flow break like he was a branch in the middle of a tumbling white river. He froze at the feel of its thunderous passage, inches away like the ferocious velocity of a massive locomotive. It shook the ground violently as it roared by, screeching a path through the dark. A sudden overwhelming stink of death soaked through the chaos. Coy with the rot of meat and mildew, the release of tainted air poured over him like a layer of fog. Sam felt solid objects strike him from every side and above. He flung his arms automatically over his head as he waited to be flattened instead of being slowly ripped inside out by the wards all around him. Another explosion made his arms jerk tighter in protection, the rain of shattered concrete striking him sharp and hard. In a daze, Sam realized the collision was with the opposite wall by the door.

Everything fell abruptly and utterly silent.

Sam was so stunned it took him a moment to realize he wasn’t dying. Not only was he not dying, but the scorch of the symbols were fading on his flesh like multiple afterimages of a camera’s flash. It didn’t take long for his blind gaze to turn towards where he’d heard the last of the destruction. The trickle of rubble still falling from the unseen damage was loudest where he knew the door had been. His attempted words came out as a rasp, barely audible even to himself. A deep inhale of the dust made him seize on the next breath, coughing harshly into his arm. Trying to look for signs of anything at all with stinging watery eyes, there was nothing but the echoing drop of remnants in the stifling dark.

A stagger of a footstep made him still again. This time not out of caution but in relief. The pinpoint of light seemed like the brightest thing Sam had ever seen. It swung and jerked uncertainly over the wreckage. The flashlight was small. One of those tiny metal click-on’s with a flimsy fragile filament. Dean had probably found it while he had walked the halls searching for the correct last name on a plaque. A caretaker’s office or a storage closet.

Dean ungracefully fell to a kneel beside him, the dim stark light making the dust ignite like smoke in the air. Sam could see some of it now. The crush around him slowly being shoved back by his brother’s hands. The patch work of matted hair on skulls rolled off the brittle connection of yellowed spine. The tangle of near perfect fabric stained through with the well preserved skin that hadn’t had enough time to wither. All the bodies had erupted from their places deep in the walls, empting the contents of all the crypts in a jumbled grotesque pile. As his brother worked him free, he found it easier to stare upwards at the trail of light that Dean had tossed aside. From the angle in which it sat, the narrow beam shone straight up at the ceiling. Sam flexed his hands as he studied the jagged path scored by the thing’s passage. It had ripped right through the center of the careful concentric arrangement of circles Gordon had placed there. Every single one of them had been broken. Sam wondered if all the chalk marks on the floor looked the same. The ruined ceiling vanished when Dean directed the light back downwards.

Sam’s attention went back to the small tool that would get him out of this room. He saw the small initials scratched into the black chipped paint and the smaller cross etched over it. Letting himself be hauled up onto his knees, he realized the remaining burn on his palm was from his fist wrapped tightly around the length of bulky rosary beads. Insignificant tokens were sometimes all that stood in front of your life and the cold grip of what wanted to take it away. Sam smiled a little as he was heaved up onto his feet. His father had been right.

Sometimes help only came by waiting around.

 

 

 

 

 

They had walked away but not exactly untouched.

Sam noticed his brother favoring one leg and knew there were some bruises he couldn’t see with the lights out. Licking at the warm swell of salt seeping from his lower lip, he wondered what Dean’s arms must feel like, stiff with dried blood under his blackened sleeves. At least the vision problem seemed to have not gotten any worse. Sam never knew how to correctly judge or assess his brother’s damage. It all got stashed away so efficiently that it was easy to forget it was there at all.

They paused near the base of the stairwell and quietly listened before proceeding.

Dean didn’t have to explain that he’d been able to move before the whole wall came down like someone had detonated some plastics under it. Sam didn’t expect the usual half proud, half self astonished explanation of how it had been accomplished. He didn’t want to know when or how the invisible vise he’d created had gone away. It was a simple task to numbly walk in a slowed pace behind his brother and follow the wavering dazzling spot of the downcast flashlight. Staring at it made him a little dizzy, the sharp contrast to the murk set on every side brought a vague ache behind his eyes. Through all his other bumps and scrapes he felt the same unsettling hum right down in his center, the same sensation after he’d stood up in that chapel. Swallowing, he fought off the fear of what all those chalk marks could have inadvertently set off. It was as if the exposure to their shapes had started pushing at something already prepared to tip over its edge.

The small landing between floors was long enough for his brother to pace. He did it twice before stopping at the bar railing and leaning on it like it had a view. It was stupid to think that Dean wouldn’t halt here in the relative safety of the deserted rise of steps. Sam knew that this time it was all past efforts for diversion but he figured he’d go ahead and give it a try anyway.

“You think it’s up there?”

His brother didn’t turn around.

“Yeah.” Dean sighed shortly.

Sam shifted in place and waited for the hammer to fall. He knew what was coming. Ever since Dean had left him in that circle with nothing but candles he knew he’d have to hear the questions. He had even considered conjuring a story like he had for Gordon. But there was nothing he could manufacture that his brother would ever believe. When the rage finally surfaced, it came as no surprise.

“What the hell is goin’ on, Sam?”

“I don’t know.”

Dean breathed a tired laugh. His expression in the faint cast of meager light was drawn and angry.

“If you say that one more time, I swear to God I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” Sam asked with open hands.

One more fascinating little piece of this puzzle and the big picture was going to break whatever was left keeping Dean by his side. His brother knew too much already. Sam would be left alone with this terrible uncertainty. He’d spend whatever was left of his life in hiding from the men that snuffed out the unnatural. Sam swayed, his vision wavering slightly as the roiling hum down deep bubbled back up to the surface. He squeezed his eyes shut.

That couldn’t happen. He wouldn’t let it.

“What are you doing?”

The nervous tone in Dean’s voice made him open his eyes uneasily. Sam held up his arms, the vague shimmer of distortion coming off his skin like it had done before in the vault below. His panic mixed with the surge, combing the white hot danger of it into something even more potent. Something leapt and flickered with his agitation. He heard himself saying what he knew his brother never wanted to hear again.

“I d-don’t know, I can’t stop it—“

“Sam—“

The slurred words that came out of him next were incoherent but the warning was there all the same. The haze over his skin flooded up over his eyes throwing the stairwell into an indistinguishable blackness. All he knew was that it was happening again. All he knew was that Dean had to get away from here. But he didn’t hear a swift tread ascending the stairs. He heard a steady hurried voice. Sam’s frantic grasp on the inundation slipped and his vision snapped back into a clarity that made him nauseous.

He knew the words Dean was reciting.

Quick and fast, the strict annunciation was as important as putting the precise caliber in the right gun. For a moment the sound hung like smoke from a barrel, before suddenly dissipating upwards like a wind had caught. The ground between them lit up like the stuttering flash of a firecracker without the sound. Sam felt the wash of the energy boiling on the peripheral of his vision sent painfully in reverse, folding over him like a physical weight. He staggered backwards in surprise, the bricks behind him keeping him on his feet. There weren’t a whole lot of words they knew of that worked as well as the toss of a finely aimed blade. It was one of their parlor tricks that Sam had never seen do anything but make the things they hunted wince. Being on the receiving end of it made him realize it did a lot more than what it looked like. But the dizzying hurt swiftly grayed to nothing at all.

Before Sam could even consider what the hell had happened, the energy buzzing in his head responded to the assault. It came springing back out of him involuntarily, the swing of it arcing through the air like the cut of a scythe. The flashlight clattered to the ground, flinging their shadows up against the wall. Dean gasped as it struck, his hands trying to catch hold of anything solid as he was forced to the edge of the top step. His grip briefly found the railing before it was whipped away, both his arms wrenched slowly to his sides as he struggled to lurch forward back into Sam’s direction. Watching like a faraway bystander, he waited in horror for his brother to tumble backwards down the steep stairs.

Sam let out a desperate sound when Dean’s knees buckled as he was about to be sent reeling into open space.

But for some reason that didn’t happen.

His brother wasn’t falling down into the unlit depths of the basement. In fact, Dean didn’t seem to be moving at all. Stepping forward hesitantly, Sam lifted and lowered his hand twice before he comprehended his proximity was neither furthering nor worsening the situation. Pushing away his apprehension, he quickly closed the distance between them and locked their forearms. With an experimental tug, his brother was immediately released, his full weight pulling his ready arms taut. Dean let himself be swung over towards the wall, Sam almost collapsing on top of him with the disbelief that he was still in one piece.

They were both silent for a few moments, the sound of their frayed breathing echoing up across the bare concrete. His brother turned towards him, the murky light catching his face.

Dean’s voice was back with some of the reassurance that was in his eyes.

“Guess you were wrong.”

Dean gave an appreciative glance over his shoulder at where he had been headed. Sam couldn’t remember ever being quite so glad to see that patronizing half smile.

“Looks like you can call a few shots after all.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

There wasn’t a vote but it was unanimous that the best idea was to get the hell out of the place.

As they turned every corner Sam expected to see the shape of something that wasn’t supposed to be there. For all their studious research they had little to no idea what the thing down in the cellar would look like once it had given birth to itself right back into the world. They walked up alongside the walls, avoiding the puddles of lamp light that spotted the floors every few yards. Checking behind them as the next deserted corridor was cleared, Sam supposed it didn’t matter what the form it decided to manifest in. He was reasonably sure that they would know it when they saw it. Or it saw them.

They were both out of breath by the time they caught sight of the front entrance. Slapping Dean in the side to silently get his attention, he motioned in the opposite direction. Dean hesitated a few moments before they were going again. Sam felt his brother’s guarded reluctance pulling behind him like a weight until the promise of an exit sign appeared. He had remembered the floor plan included another way out back there that wouldn’t them lead right out into the parking lot. The fire alarm was going to go off but whoever was half asleep on the other end of the security system would arrive long after their departure. The thought of anyone coming to this place in an effort to bring aid made Sam grit his teeth. The magnitude in which the job had been absolutely fucked up was beyond even his wildest acceptance of the term of possible. He knew Dean had been correct. The thing hadn’t taken off directly after its liberation. The newly risen took a little time to get their bearings just like anyone else. It was still around here someplace. Sam touched the rosary he’d stuffed in a pocket even though he knew its charm wouldn’t do much now.

Overhead the night sky was cloudless.

The feel of the cold air was one of the sweetest things he could recall experiencing in a long time. The building was so far removed from the town that every star shone down like there was no room between each point of light. There was a strip of asphalt that extended into the tangle of woods. If they followed it long enough it probably lead right around towards the access road. Sam was going to suggest they head south instead. They could take their chances with running into a two-laner he had caught sight of long ago during their trip in that sedan. Knowing that a few flashing lights might be headed their way to check up on the place, he wanted to be nowhere in sight.

The view of what lay right behind the mausoleum made him pause. It seemed the place had also made accommodations for those that didn’t want to be interred within four walls. Hundreds of white stones in tidy rows sat in unkempt grass, the weeds burying their memorandums. Sam immediately saw why it was as affordable as the cheap vaults. The chipped stones were showing signs of weathering even though the plots were barely a few decades in the making. The very front row was where a little extra time and money had been spent. Instead of a headstone to sit over cremated remains there were statues holding the urns. There were strangely similar, all bad copies of a Greek classic holding the metal jars in place of what had been probably originally a child. The factory sculptor had made them all practically featureless. Their blank faces gazed serenely at the rear of the building’s noisy ventilation equipment. Dean tugged at Sam’s sleeve as he started walking south without even hearing the suggestion. When he suddenly stopped short, Sam almost walked into him with his hurry to get gone.

“Aw crap.” Dean murmured.

It took a few more moments to finally see the figure standing still amongst the stone that his brother had already spotted. Seated comfortably on a grave between the solemn carved women, Gordon’s rifle was casually hung over an arm. He cleared his throat with a shake of his head.

“You guys sure make a lot of noise.”

Dean anxiously scanned the property around them before responding.

“Yeah, yeah, this has all been a ton of fun Gordon.” He was walking forward as he spoke. “But we have to get the fuck out of here before—“

Gordon held up a finger in a gesture to shush him. Sam had to hand it to the guy for knowing precisely how to really piss his brother off. Grabbing hold of the back of Dean’s jeans, Sam stopped him when he started to lunge forward again, cocked rifle level with his chest or not.

“Before you get all your work done?” The hunter finished.

Sam was too busy watching exactly where the tip of the double barrel was pointing to notice the disturbance at first. Just like the man seated on the tomb, the shadows of the trees beyond and the absence of the moon made everything flow into the monochrome uniformity of nightfall. But dragging his attention away from the armed hunter, he was distracted by some kind of movement. Refocusing, he strained to catch sight of what had stirred in the corner of his eye. A gust of wind blew sluggishly through the identical slabs planted in sagging angles in the grass. Glancing sideways at his brother, Sam could tell from posture alone that he wasn’t paying attention to anything but the man who had brought them here.

But Gordon was more than done with talking.

Although he knew he should be concerned about bullets, Sam was more transfixed with the space directly behind the man. He watched the amorphous glimmer of nothing slice a line neatly down through thin air. It was perfectly straight and as thin as the reeds that swayed gently against the bare feet of the statues. Widening like a door sliding open, the dark depth of it began to make the sky above seem purple. Gordon was oblivious to its silent ominous growth right at his back.

Dean could see it now.

Suitably worried, his brother faltered a few steps backwards into him as it loomed into a towering expanse that blotted out the star light. The back of Sam’s thigh bumped hard into a headstone as he began his own eager retreat. The discharge of the rifle cracked through the air like a thunder clap. His brother’s body collided and rolled painfully over his as they both tossed themselves over the chunk of engraved granite. Sam blinked up in dazed bewilderment as the world stopped turning upside down. Another round blasted right over their heads, impacting with the rock and splintering shards into the air. The rifle clacked as it was reloaded.

Sam found himself in no hurry to get up out of the piled dirt and make tracks like the circumstances warranted. That gentle wind he’d noticed had picked up enough to start furiously blowing dead leaves along the ground. The temperature starting dropping so rapidly that his wheeze of shock came out as a cloud in front of his face.

Gordon had wanted to know the reason why they were there.

He was about to find out.

 

to be concluded


	8. Chapter 8

Sam reflected on just how many times he’d stood at the crossroads of his training and common sense.

Everything he’d been taught told him to stay right where he was and not move. Staring up at the steady swirl of clouds that hadn’t been here when he had stepped out the mausoleum’s back doors, very instinct he owned told him to get up on his feet and run.

The rifle fire paused long enough for a reload.

When Sam saw his brother fold behind the tombstone several feet away he thought with a detached numb certainty that one of Gordon’s bullets had met its mark. But when Dean rolled back onto his side, he wasn’t clutching the bright red mess of his gut. Sending a look in Sam’s direction, he leaned cautiously into the protective stone that was the only thing between them and the next discharge. Sam knew his brother wouldn’t remain out of sight and wait patiently until the barrel of that rifle came into view for the perfect shot. Dean was going to act first.

“Dean, wait—“

His brother’s poised body gave halt although Sam could barely hear his own voice over the rising wail of the cold wind. He used his hand instead, a signal to strongly request that Dean stay his ground. Gordon’s boots were easy to follow on the gravel path between the rows of stones. The hunter wasn’t in any hurry. Watching the sky overhead turn to pitch, Sam swore under his breath as the night was rapidly smothered by a deeper darkness.

Uncoiling and stretching in every direction, strands of the unleashed phantom were crawling and burrowing like searching limbs. Its reach cut through the air, leaving slices of black to bleed in its passage. A rope of it sizzled past and abruptly doubled back around the scattered graves. Sam heard the warning rise in his throat as its frenzied descent met and tore savagely across the ground behind his brother. It was going to strike Dean in the back; burn a singeing hole through his flesh like it had done through the vault walls and knock him into Gordon’s sights to finish off what was left. But to Sam’s confusion, his brother didn’t even so much as flinch as it blustered around him like the wind tousling his clothes.

Clutching his head, he fought the energy buried under his skin as it arced and leapt like electricity. It writhed like a living thing fighting to be set free from the fragile cage of his skull. Sam unexpectedly realized that Dean couldn’t see any of what was happening around them. Feeling the foreboding ache pulse hot behind his eyes, he knew this special view was some part of his new set of tricks. If that was the case, that meant if his brother couldn’t see it, then Gordon probably couldn’t see it either.

Standing up was harder than he thought it would be.

The headstone was taking the brunt of the wind but it still managed to buffet him back a step before he righted himself. Sam heard his brother's voice, from far off, demanding him to get down. He watched Gordon pause less than a meter away from him on the trail. If Sam had taken another step he could have leaned over and shook the man's hand. The barrel was locked with another round, leaving a simple task to aim and fire. But Sam had been correct, the hunter was unaware of the activity around them. All Gordon could see was the turn in the weather. The streaking passage of the manifestation caused no alarm even when a surge of it passed right through Gordon’s chest, emerging from his back and winding its turbulent way through the alabaster statues.

Sam shut his eyes and let the heat flare up in his core like it wanted.

Something white hot flipped in his belly like a livewire, bands of it surging out around him like rings around a planet, and then tightly constricting back like another skin. It was the same sensation as when his body first twitched at the sight of chalk on the floor. He recognized it like the echo of panic before he’d almost shoved his brother’s body down cement stairs. With a faint smile, he realized it also felt like the very first time he’d squeezed a trigger and knew without a doubt that the bullet he’d sent hurtling into space was a direct bull’s-eye. The steady hum that had been growing inside his head since Gordon exposed him to the old symbols shifted to a howl. The presence of their shapes had clicked something on like a flood light he couldn’t smash, shining against his insides.

The harsh wind blowing against his face immediately eased. The tight swirl of the black above his head slowed to a sluggish rotation. Holding up a hand, he watched it travel towards his face while the tossing dead leaves all strangely stilled midair in their tumble around him.

There was a strain in the atmosphere, like a painfully held in breath. Seconds had been briefly stretched to minutes. The roil of his energy momentarily froze him almost still in time as it silently burst like a bubble, saturating space in a rapid wide diffusion of his senses. His awareness settled like a mist, cataloguing every pebble and blade of grass around him. For one sickening moment, he could see his immediate surroundings from every conceivable angle before snapping back to his own body’s perspective.

He wondered where his fear was. Underneath the flicker of power it was still there. Pressed down flat by a calm he knew he couldn't maintain for long.

The gray billowing tendrils had blossomed over the trees tops, expanding over the mausoleum’s sprawl like a storm. Each plume slithering towards the sky felt like the maddening touch of feathers being traced along the insides of his arms, chest and up his neck. Shutting his eyes again, he could feel each separate thread as it traveled, predicted each turn it would take before it finally collided and melded into one another. He could sense the entirety of it at the core, still growing behind Gordon in that widening plain of nothing. When he opened his eyes, he wasn’t surprised that the strand he had reached out to grab was flailing trapped in his fist.

There was something here that was not dark but deadly, not evil but frightening. Sam didn’t know how to use it. All he knew was how it wanted to gush out of him like a flood of sand rushing through his clenched hands. A litany began to form in his head. It came clear like a voice, a stream of self direction to center what he had and bring it to a smoldering pinpoint of a tool he could apply.

Make it work.

Gordon leveled his rifle at Sam’s heart.

Make it work or you’ll die.

Sam saw his brother step into his peripheral vision.

Make it work.

Stepping forward, Sam felt his hand make perfect synchronized contact with the tip of the weapon and his brother’s chest at the same time. As the second slowly turned over, he let his gaze tip skywards. Sam knew that what had been released needed to be contained. He knew enough to know that a ghost couldn’t be trapped very easily at all. But now it all seemed like a simple equation that required only the force of his will. The rifle went off, the sound extended and muted, the stuttered crackle of gunpowder exploding dully. The discharge trailed sluggishly into the sky like fireworks underwater. The sparkling orange glitter of fire illuminated them all as Dean fell backwards. Sam hadn’t meant to push him that hard but he was tumbling well out of the range of the hunter’s shot.

With that danger put aside, he redirected his attention to the larger threat.

All that was really needed was something with a symbol on it. A sign of the institution that this manifestation had warped to its own uses and needs. The magic of the church was like magic anywhere else. Like all the other carbon copies that lined the hedge, the closest statue was personalized on its marble base. The Star of David for some, a war memorial for others. His gaze shifted to the metal urn the stone woman held in her arms. A cross and some pure steel.  
Salt would have sealed the package but two out of three wasn’t bad.

Staring up into the boiling cloud, he could feel the whole of it contract in the fist he made of his mind. He could see the spiraling tendrils suddenly shrink as he willed them to. Forcing them back down into the dense shadow they had emerged from, he heard himself groan at the onslaught of ferocious strength it exerted back. It got smaller and smaller, tighter and tighter until the mass was no larger than the sealed iron jar.

Sam staggered backwards. His mind’s suspension in a second turned eternity suddenly rushed back into real time. Sweat poured of his skin and his hair clung to his face like he'd been doused with water. All the darkness suddenly belonged to the night again, the wind abruptly dropped.

Gordon and his brother were both staring at him.

They had no idea what had just happened besides Sam’s incomprehensible ability to have thwarted them both from their tasks at hand. Gordon’s shot had unexplainably strayed and his brother had been pushed out of its path by what had appeared to be nothing at all. Dean was looking around in confusion now that the unrelenting wind had vanished. Gordon’s barrel was empty but it looked like he was thinking about how nice the hard butt of the weapon would feel crunching into bone.

A loud grinding sound made Sam start, eyes trained on the trio of granite caryatids supporting the entrance to one of the elaborate tombs behind Gordon. A flicker of movement -like a shadow- across the middle figure made him focus. The solid heaviness of the statue’s limbs had changed. Her pale hand came out and flexed like breathing flesh.

It didn’t take long to understand that what Sam had contained wasn’t quite contained at all. He hadn’t trapped the thing, he’d just shoved it all into one dense roiling mass and its attention was now locked right on Gordon.

“What did you do—”

Gordon’s voice finally carried the edge it should have. His rational fear had finally leveled with the span of his considerable knowledge of what there was to worry about in his world. The hunter finally comprehended that the signs all around him were not the thrashings of some weak wailing sheet that he could salt and burn in his sleep. Whether he knew that the spirit wasn’t of Sam’s making didn’t really matter anymore. The semantics of the thing’s presence didn’t make its proximity any less hazardous.

The rifle faltered when he met the gaze of the statue behind him. The solemn blank expression had been reset into frozen pleasure, living eyes wetly rolling in stone sockets. Gordon’s calm features contorted to anger, the realization of his failure to perceive the threat igniting his rage more profoundly than Sam had yet to witness. But fury and surprise was a mixture that was lethal to all men in their profession. Despite everything, Sam still felt his heart lurch in his chest when Gordon stumbled and fell backwards trying to put some space between his body and the smiling sculpture. Had Sam done this? Had he somehow influenced the thing to turn its wrath on the hunter instead of himself?

“Gordon!” Sam gasped. “G-Get up—“

The words died in his throat as she began to laboriously step down off her dais. The impact of her heavy step felt like a tremor, the reverberating thud of the next bringing her right over Gordon’s body. Without words or breath, the pale figure stretched out one white arm and began to lean down to touch him with her cold fingertips. Sam saw all the comprehension drain from Gordon's dark eyes as her hand tightened around his arm. He did not go slack, however. His gaze was fixed and his hands still clenched the useless weapon.

Sam felt another wave of queasiness.

He could feel his brother pulling his arm, a low voice urging him to move. When his vision wavered in and out Sam knew he was going to pay for the power he'd somehow commandeered. He'd gone further than he had ever gone before and the penalty for allowing what lurked inside him to emerge would be above and beyond the usual. He felt the grass against his cheek before he was aware that he had fallen. There was no pain, just swift blackness as his brain finally, and neatly, tripped its circuit.

The last thing he could do was listen.

And when Gordon opened his mouth the screams were like something not of this world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He ached in worrying ways.

Once he was sure the shadows weren't alive to grasp at his ankles, he moved again. His brother’s hand was on his face and for some reason Dean’s tired expression assured him that he hadn’t been very out of it for long. One anxious scan of their immediate vicinity revealed that they were all alone.

The statue was still there however.

It was in pieces, nothing but a jumbled heap where Sam had last seen it. It was a tidy pile, the arms and legs had snapped off cleanly in sections where its manufacture was weakest. The head had rolled away from its body’s disintegration like a decapitation. Her eyes were somber and unseeing. It was just a cheap tomb decoration again. The thing that had animated it had left the confines of the rock figure in favor of a much more suitable vessel. The man it had chosen and the rifle he carried were nowhere to be seen.

The wind was a gentle cold pull through the dry weeds.

“Wh-What—“ Sam winced when a familiar agony began to hammer behind his eyes. “Where’d he go?”

“The woods.” Dean answered shortly.

Sam knew what that meant. They weren’t equipped with what they really needed to handle something of that ferocity. Bare hands wouldn’t do much when they required a munitions store. Especially not a full on possession of this scale. He staggered to his feet and looked out into the silent forest just behind the cemetery’s border. His gaze went back to the tipped steel urn laying in the grass that had been a momentary prison for the thing, a prison that Sam had somehow made. The possession might have very well been his doing too. But he hadn’t used his hands at all had he? Sam hadn’t even uttered one word of Latin.

He looked nervously over at his brother.

Dean was studying a patch of asphalt that turned the corner of the building’s ventilation system. Sam hadn’t been aware of Gordon when he walked out the mausoleum doors, but it seemed he hadn’t noticed the man’s stolen car either. His brother walked stiffly to the parked sedan and carefully peered inside the open window just in case Gordon left any more surprises. With a resigned shrug, he leaned in to pull the trunk release.

Sam involuntarily backed up a step at the sight of the leather bound books.

“Yeah.” Dean laughed a tired laugh. “You better stay way the hell over there.”

His brother dug through the trunk until he found a black duffel bag. He wrapped both books up in some loose tarp before he shoved them into the depths of the sack and yanked the zipper closed.

Sam waited until the bag was placed under another tarp and the trunk slammed closed before he let out the breath he was holding.

“Where are we going?”

Dean swung the driver's door open and gestured to the passenger side with a nod.

“We get my car.” He told him. “Then we’re heading west.”

“What’s west?”

“Not here.”

“Anything else?” Sam asked as he took a seat.

Dean turned the key conveniently left in the ignition. Sam thanked Gordon, wherever he was, for being so accommodating. His brother knocked the rearview to where he wanted it.

“Maybe.” His gaze moved up and down Sam before jerking the car into gear. “Maybe a few answers.”

 

 

 

 

 

From the outside it was painfully typical.

A scattering of pouty teens waited nervously on the stoop outside to become rebels like everybody else. The glass front doors were plastered with promotional band stickers, magic marker tags and poster ads for what DJ was going to be where next. A constant mesmerizing bass of industrial cyber punk blasted from loudspeakers. Sam wondered if there were any tattoo artists in the world who appreciated folk music.

He found it strange that he and his brother were unique in that they were of the few in their profession who did not hold day jobs. Some had roadside dives to hide their skeletons. A few looked like scrap mechanics to anyone else. Few hunters made the life full time. Others recognized the need to stay under radar... to say nothing of a steady income.

The guy waiting behind the counter was, more or less, what Sam expected. Shaved head and firm muscles visible with barely any spaces between the ink. He was completely covered in his art, blocks of dusky blue designs making his race almost indeterminable. The man’s voice was so low and deep that it made Sam swallow uncomfortably.

“What the hell happen’ to you?”

Dean looked down at his hands, palms ups to reexamine the brand new white bandages that covered the insides of his forearms and the multitude of stitches they covered. Sam knew those were the wounds that had needed the most professional attention but he thought the large man was eyeing something else. From the look of it, the shop owner was probably referring to the seep of ripe bruising that colored his brother’s jaw and cheek. Sam knew he didn’t look so hot himself.

“Fight with a lawnmower.” Dean managed to sound cheerful. “Almost won.”

The proprietor hadn’t been too excited by the idea of telling his staff to stop tracing roses, skulls and Japanese kanji on the next generation. But one look at the black duffel bag Dean dropped on the glass display case put an expression on the man’s face Sam felt he rarely ever showed. Once the neon open sign had been clicked off and the confused employees had departed, they were both shown into the man’s other place of business. As Sam expected, it was appropriately sublevel.

The dingy basement study did not smell nearly as sterile as the clinical appearance of his commercial establishment. Cluttered metal shelves were filled with books under lock and key. A sizeable safety glass case of weapons and artifacts identified him as one of their own. In the corner, a large filthy fish tank with no fish in sight was lit up by the queer glow of a black light. The steel table and a couple of adjustable stuffed black leather dentist’s chairs made Sam break out in an involuntary sweat.

He felt his anxiety flare as the man flicked on the bright white surgical lamp above the table and began scrubbing his hands at a slightly worrisome rusty sink.

“I tell ya man, I don’t do this kinda thing every decade.” He informed them.

“It’ll be fine.” Dean made himself comfortable in one of the chairs, reclining all the way back with his hands behind his head. “’Sides, yer the only guy I could find with the right kind of tools.”

The faucet squeaked shut with a muttered curse. The man shook his hands dry, ripping latex gloves from a box.

“Okay.” He gestured to the steel table. “Let’s do this.”

 

 

 

 

Sam tried relaxing and he tried tension but neither helped.

They'd had to razor clean a small portion from Sam’s hairline to create the canvas. When the procedure was through his neglected shag was long enough to conveniently conceal it. The space at the back of his neck felt icy and hot at the same time. Biting his lip, he was glad his brother couldn’t see his face as it was bent forward as far as it could go. The harsh scent of antiseptic and latex filled his nostrils and he fought the urge not to twitch or cough.

"Just try ta hold still." Gloved fingers pressed warm and firm against his skin.

Sam re-focused and tried to control his breathing. The tiny steel point was excruciating as it hummed over sensitive flesh. The fine gauge of the detail had been no more than an agonizing whisper; a jellyfish’s sting. However, when the large gauge of the filler met the same open wounds, he couldn’t keep back the whimper of indignant disbelief.

The man had been very strict about placement. The rules that dictated usage were extremely rigid and this man was an expert on them. The design was straightforward, an implement rather than an aesthetic. Four circles of the elements closing the four points of the cross.

“So?” Dean wanted to know from his luxurious stretch on the other chair. “What’s it feel like?”

“Like a needle going in and out of my skull.” Sam said through clenched teeth.

“Don’t worry,” the man paused to press down on Sam’s neck, numbing the pain a little. “We’ll hit my bar later. By midnight this’ll be nothing but a bad sunburn.”

Everything from the grade of the needle to the ink embedded into Sam’s skin had required purposeful calculation. The indigo dye was worth thousands, derived from the extracts of plants from the man’s native country. The needles had been riskier. They were not hygienically unused. In fact they were ancient.

Sam would have preferred to be spared that knowledge.

He listened to the machine buzz, trying to ignore the flutter in his gut that had never completely gone away. With each burning pass of the needle’s tip, he willed the mark to take its shape and squelch the flickering energy that lay in wait through every vein and nerve. Most intent on his mind was the mark’s purpose and function. Not strangely, the artist meticulously injecting pigment into his skin seemed to be thinking roughly the same thing.

“Still don’t know why you’re laying down this kinda cash.” The man said, his tone lost in the second nature of his honed concentration. “It’s like buying asteroid insurance.”

His brother tapped the duffel, the sound of the leather beneath thudded under his knuckles.

“You’re the one that said that mark is legit.” Dean mumbled. “You said it’s the real deal.“

“Yeah.” The man gave his brother a lopsided smile. “It sure is.”

“Than what’s the problem?”

“Every now and then I get your type comin’ my way poking around for a little indemnity against the bad guys.” He sighed. “But it’s usually a four leaf clover.”

“Wh-what if…it’s not big enough?” Sam bit down as the needle shifted. “What if the position is—“

Sam did not have to see the man’s grin to know it was there.

“Then you’ll have a lame tattoo for the rest of your life.”

“Well, it better work.” Dean said firmly, reaching down to heft the black duffel bag onto his lap. “I ain’t paying you to guess.”

“Settle down.” The man’s voice rumbled. “You want this left a work in progress?”

Sam shared a look with his brother that pleaded for his silence. The fact that this man had opened Gordon’s old books and had actually ever seen them before had been remarkable.

Although Sam had assumed a safe position on the opposite side of the room, what he initially heard had been encouraging. The assurance that the guy had had the vaguest notion that the texts might involve some hazy branch of Christian thaumaturgy had made Sam sit down with light headed relief. When a decorated hand had stopped the pages on a symbol that was recognized with absolute certainty, Dean had gone ahead and taken a seat too. According to the artist, the figure was derived from other common variations as being a fortified mark of defense. Shields were all well and good, but this man had specifically used the term: governor. It figured his brother had immediately picked up that the phrase had been used as it applied to engine mechanics.

gov•er•nor  
–noun  
Machinery. a device for maintaining uniform speed regardless of changes of load, as by regulating the supply of fuel or working fluid.

Sam wasn’t quite sure what to say about the nature of his own luck.

Out of all the assorted mysteries in the yellowed pages, the only thing that had been positively identified was a ward that kept your numinous temperature down. It was a safeguard for anything that wanted to spin out of control. The simple flow of lines in the symbol could dampen whatever is was flowing through Sam’s head and hopefully keep what wanted to roar down to a whisper. Sam kept imaging a boiling rattling pot calming to still cool water. Thankfully, this man had met enough of their kind not to ask too many questions. From the off sentences mentioned of others that had sought him out with uncanny gifts, Sam wasn’t so sure that this man wasn’t hiding some shade of extrasensory himself.

“Speakin’ of getting paid.” The artist’s gaze drifted to the bag in Dean’s lap. “I’d consider a 100% discount if you’re interested.”

Sam knew just as well as his brother did that any negotiation over the substantial bill meant a trade. They hadn’t walked through the door with anything much besides a couple guns and that didn’t mean jack shit to a person that already owned a well stocked armory. That pretty much left one other thing unless the guy was interested in a brand new old car.

“Don’t see books like those much. Wouldn’t mind a few hours alone with a copy machine.”

Money or no, Dean obviously was as hesitant as he was curious about handing over the information the texts contained to someone who had the remote chance of actually deciphering it. The guy shrugged and directed his attention back to his work. He cleared his throat, his voice turning to a tone of professional advisory.

“Listen up. This ain’t gonna protect you and it ain’t gonna get rid of anything. That kind of shit is a whole other business that I don’t run. This is only gonna help make sure you don’t have a meltdown. Got that?”

“Keep any of the bad out?” Dean asked.

The man raised an eyebrow.

“The day I get a demon in my chair I’ll give it a try and let you know.”

Dean’s soft laugh sounded as forced as it was.

Sam pretended his wince was from the needle working its careful path on his skin. He was glad there was a legitimate excuse for squeezing his eyes shut so he wouldn’t have to meet his brother’s gaze. Dean’s drawn expression hadn’t shed much of what had transpired merely 48 hours before. He was regarding Sam with a look that had been there in the flashlight’s dim cast of the mausoleum’s stairwell. It was a look that was as lost and uncertain as ever.

It was also still just as pissed off.

 

 

 

 

 

Chewing three aspirin had done a surprising amount to quiet the throb behind his eyes that hadn’t quit since he’d last seen Gordon.

The pain killers had actually been for his neck but they did little to soothe that flame. Placing the drinking glass down on the bedside table, he thought it was a little weird what kinds of pain could be treated. Some things you had to tolerate no matter how intolerable they seemed to be. He tossed another rolled up pair of jeans into his bag. There wasn’t any need to look around for anything he might have missed. He knew his own list of belongings as well as the arsenal concealed in the trunk.

Unlike that inventory, his was extremely uncomplicated.

His dad had always told him he should never own more than three pairs of socks. One pair was for wearing. The other was for washing. Sam rolled up the last rogue two that were hanging loose and forgotten in a tangle of unfolded T-shirts. The third pair was for every other time in between. Packing up his clothes never took much of an effort. It was difficult to forget stuff when you didn’t have a great deal of property. It was the scatter of papers and trash that took longer to pore through. There were motel fixtures like soap and towels to be had. Out of courtesy there was always a half hearted attempt to tidy up the remainders of their presence and toss it in the garbage.

Most important was to not leave anything of any of significance behind.

Sam flipped through a motel stationary that had several numbers and addresses scribbled on it. To anyone else it would be a few names and places to get buzzed and find some fun. It was as harmless to find in the trash as the cartons of empty take out. Pushing over some newspapers he startled himself by seeing a notebook he usually always made sure got tucked in with his laptop. As much as he’d grown accustomed to a keyboard, the engrained family habit of shorthand had never completely faded away. Shaking his head at the thought of misplacing something that essential, he carefully slipped it into his bag. There were a few moments of hesitation before he sighed and also lifted the black sack that held the books. He knew the layer of nylon was a flimsy shelter from their effects but it was all that seemed to be required.

It always felt good to zip up the center of his canvas bag and know the easy weight of his possessions was exactly where it should be. Sam slipped the computer satchel over his shoulder and hefted the duffel by its thick strap. It was a little awkward to carry for long distances but he only had a few miles to go.

He let himself look at the unmade bed that sat across from his own. Dean’s clothes were all over it like usual. Dirty laundry mixed in with the clean. A scattering of cassette tapes without covers and leather sheaves missing their blades. His brother’s personal mess wasn’t very varied or large but it never failed to accomplish an impressive sprawl over any place that was momentarily claimed.

The small thin phone felt as heavy as his bag when he slipped it into his jacket pocket. He always saved that act for last because it was the largest of losses if his only source of communication was somehow forgotten. The click of the light and the shutting door was something he’d done so many times before he never thought about it. When so much time was spent leaving it didn’t really seem like what it was anymore.

Hearing that door close hadn’t quite ever made him feel like it did now. Subdued. Alone. Isolated. While he was at it, he might as well admit that the sinking feeling in his gut wasn’t just the hectic flutter of whatever Gordon had kindly woken up beneath his skin. Balancing his duffel over his shoulder, he took in a shaky breath and tried to fight what was seeping up through his forced calm. He was as fucking scared of walking down that road as he was staying where he was.

“If you catch the 6AM, you’ll probably hit Atlanta in time for dinner.”

Sam didn’t turn towards the open air stairs that lead to the motel’s second floor balcony. It had been dark enough not to notice his brother sitting on its steps. Sam had thought he’d done a pretty good job of excusing himself and ditching the smiling party in the bar. Turned out his poker face wasn’t as great as he thought it was.

“Or Vegas.” Dean sighed. “Or whatever goddamn coast you’re heading for.”

Sam shifted in place. He didn’t want to explain. He didn’t want to hear his brother read his mind and recite his fears out loud.

“I-I’ll call you in-in a few days.” Sam stammered. “I just need some time.“

He bleakly realized that his brother hadn’t been tossing back as much whiskey as he thought over in that bar the tattoo artist owned. He could still hear the music drifting from the crowded smoky building that sat adjoining the motel. Dean chuckled but it had about as much humor to it as it had patience.

“What?” Sam was surprised at his own anger. “Something funny?”

“You thinkin’ this is a good idea.” Dean stepped out of the shadows and into the pale lamp light. “That’s pretty hilarious.”

Sam stared at him, his entire body trembling with the effort it took to force the next words out of his mouth.

“It’s not gone, Dean.”

His brother’s fists worked at his sides as he stared back apprehensively. Dean didn’t have to be told what ‘it’ was.

“Not supposed to be.” Dean said. “Not yet. He told us it would just keep it down, stop it from—“

“You don’t get it.”

A muscle in his brother’s jaw twitched, his steady gaze flickering up and off the black bag hanging off Sam’s shoulder.

“I don’t feel any different.” Sam listened to his voice crack and didn’t care. “All I have now is a headache I can’t shake and the bonus of a third degree burn on the back of my neck!”

“Sammy, it’s only been a night okay?” His brother held out his hands. “Give it a chance. At least sleep on it—"

“You really think anything’s going to change by tomorrow?" Sam could not control the rage that silenced his brother. "You think one more mark is gonna fix it?"

"Actually, I don’t know shit." Dean answered. "You seem to be keeping all the good parts to yourself."

Shutting his eyes, Sam ground his teeth at his own desperation. He wished it didn’t feel one hundred times as bad as it sounded.

“I gotta get out of here until I-I can figure this out. I have to get away."

"I've heard this song." Dean gave a wounded smile. "Always ends the same."

It took Sam a moment to realize what his brother intended by standing out in the empty parking space in front of him.

Dean settled into a stand between the yellow lines, planting his boots loose and even with his shoulders like he did when he knew he was about to take a punch. Sam felt raw panic flare up his spine as his aggravation mixed with the energy rumbling deep down in his center.

“Dean, get out of my way.”

Sam knew that no answer meant that any response was going to be a physical one. The first step forward he took got him a swing that he expected from the opposite direction. Panting against the hood of the car he’d slammed into, he didn’t have to touch his mouth to know blood was running from a split lip. Dropping the bag that hadn’t fallen, Sam righted himself and took a deep breath. If the peace talks were over than he knew how to play this old game well enough. It had been a while but their family had always had a few good sayings about confrontation. Sometimes when all else failed it was better to communicate with your hands.

Days of frustration flooded his mind like a blank white wall. It was a nauseating comfort to find a thoroughly sublime release of fear and anger, his hands meeting and missing the attack as quickly as ground gained. He barely felt the impact of the solid brick when he stumbled into it. The agony of a knee jarred to the ground when he knocked over an oversized garbage bin was far away and indistinct. Every one of his brother’s strikes that found their mark registered numbly as Sam returned each one.

The sputter of power rose and flared through his arms. Sam growled, hauling his fist outwards in an effort to keep the disgusting surge of the thing inside suppressed as much as he wanted to make satisfying retaliatory contact with Dean’s face.

To his utter surprise one of his wild swings did just that.

Dean slid off the slope of car’s trunk and slumped limply to the asphalt.

“Everything okay out here?”

Sam turned in shock at the unheard approach of the tattooed man and Dean’s latest and best drinking buddy. His brother weakly groaned on the pavement as he slowly started to come to. Sam’s gaze fell on his scattered gear.

“Bring him inside.” He heard himself saying as he shouldered the duffels and pulled the black bag out from under a soda machine where it had been kicked. “Just-just needs to sleep it off.”

The toss of the motel key fell easily into the artist’s grip, oddly steady even after a night of bourbon and beer.

“S-Sure.” The man answered. “Where you headed?”

When Sam turned his back he started walking as fast as he could without breaking into a run.

The rows of numbered doors became blurred with the questioning voice of the man that had spent the afternoon painstakingly transcribing the ancient picture onto his flesh. The traffic was heavy on the road he found on the other side of a short alley. Stained concrete rushed by under his feet with his pace. He only stopped when the blare of a car horn forced him back onto the curb to wait for a light.

Sam stared down at the bloodied skinned knuckles of his fist and knew that he’d hit teeth. That had been no explosion of incomprehensible might. His violence did not come from some power he could not control. It was a sickening relief. With a small bit of wonder, his shaking hand went to the throb that sat behind a bandage on the back of his head. The light changed, and the late night crowd pushed past him to cross the street. He looked back over his shoulder to where he’d left his brother bleeding in a parking lot.

Whatever Gordon had done was done.

All Sam knew was that he had to put some space between himself and the living world until he could work out exactly what it was that that meant.

Until then, he was going to do what he did best.

Disappear.

 

the end


End file.
